Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

3/25/2026 at 5:30:50 PM

For those like myself who wanted context:

> Cox Communications v. Sony Music, 607 U.S.___ (2026), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the liability of an internet service provider for its subscribers engaging in copyright infringement.

> Cox Communications was sued by multiple music labels for lax enforcement of its users engaged in sharing the labels' copyrighted music, arging Cox finacially benefitted from these users. A jury trial found Cox to be liable. On appeal to the Fourth Circuit, the court dismissed findings that Cox engaged in vicarious infringment, but held that Cox was still liable for contributory infringement, with Cox potentially owing several million dollars to the labels.

> In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court found that Cox Communication was not contributorily liable for the actions of its users, reversing the Fourth's decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_Communications,_Inc._v._So...

by djoldman

3/26/2026 at 2:13:48 AM

I wouldn't normally side with a cable company, but they're up against Sony Music, so I'll allow it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

by jonny_eh

3/26/2026 at 7:00:24 AM

I don't know maybe just be worried instead about being on the side of justice and what is right and not be so worried if that side has people you don't like on it.

by creddit

3/26/2026 at 10:41:17 AM

a lot of people determine what is right by who is on that side - the right side is the group that they identify with, and the wrong side is the group they dislike.

And you get the hilarious (if not sad) situations often, where the exact same actions is wrong if committed by one group, and right if done by some other group.

by chii

3/26/2026 at 1:22:52 PM

Maybe I dislike a party because they're wrong, not that I think they're wrong becuase I dislike them? I usually don't have any reason to like or dislike a party until I see behaviour.

by lowercased

3/26/2026 at 1:20:58 PM

That's not hilarious or sad. It's valid to oppose your enemies and support your allies. It takes a certain kind of educated liberal bubble to think that is "hilarious"

by snapcaster

3/26/2026 at 2:24:02 PM

Some people think that justice should be blind, and that’s long been an ideal in the US.

by jdlshore

3/27/2026 at 3:40:54 PM

I'm just so sick of people in our tribe who REFUSE to ever name their enemies. We're doing everything in good faith against people who hate us and want us to die. It's silly, and standing on some principle of equality while we continually lose over and over is sad to watch

by snapcaster

3/26/2026 at 4:15:20 PM

It's a matter of integrity. Support or oppose whoever you like, but if you change your principles based on the person in question, then you don't have principles at all.

by sethaurus

3/27/2026 at 3:41:32 PM

Are you pro or anti touchdown? Do you support or oppose winning? Is supporting my allies winning and enemies losing wrong?

by snapcaster

3/27/2026 at 7:59:56 AM

Why not, people are different and principles can account for that. It might mean that your alignment isn't fully lawful.

by GoblinSlayer

3/26/2026 at 2:20:34 PM

What happens is that it takes the form of attributing bad things to enemies and good things to allies, such that you are blind to where your allies are not your allies. If your allies are acting opposed to your interests but you like them because they signal to you as an in group, then you are being fooled by them. Thus, it is good to actually evaluate things on their merits once in a while.

by Eisenstein

3/27/2026 at 3:44:03 PM

The "blind" ones are people like you! doing everything in good faith against people who aren't and fundamentally oppose you and your existence. Foolish!

by snapcaster

3/28/2026 at 3:59:16 PM

It is only foolish if you would be happier as a cynic.

by Eisenstein

3/26/2026 at 9:05:20 PM

Support your allies, yes.

Think everything they do is right? Hell no.

And every once in a while you need to check if your list of allies should change.

by Dylan16807

3/26/2026 at 2:50:46 PM

doesn't that undermine the entire reason to have laws? if they are really just excuse to punish our enemies and reward our friends, why even bother with the pretense of a trial?

by convolvatron

3/27/2026 at 3:44:39 PM

The reason we have laws is to protect the powerful from mobs right?

by snapcaster

3/27/2026 at 9:11:41 AM

Laws protect interests of the ruling class. If interests are insufficient reason, then what is sufficient?

by GoblinSlayer

3/26/2026 at 3:10:52 PM

It leads to keeping the bad people on your "side" just because they share some of the values

> It takes a certain kind of educated liberal bubble to think that is "hilarious"

No, the hilarious part is that the "educated liberal bubble" will do exactly that thing, and then wonder why everyone else is seeing them as crazies; because they'd rather side with bad actors on their side purely because other side is attacking them, no matter the reason.

And of course, not only them. It's natural human herd behavior. And it leads to absolutely terrible end results

The crime is the crime. No matter the leaning of the criminal

by PunchyHamster

3/26/2026 at 4:38:05 PM

Its "valid" to do anything in this context weirdo, it isnt like a veridical thing!

"It is valid to love my mom, even when she makes me clean my room. This is the thing liberals will never understand."

Don't you have some "cathedral" you gotta go neckbeard on about somewhere else? Perhaps a divorce court hearing?

by beepbooptheory

3/27/2026 at 3:39:42 PM

Wow you got my demographics and political opinions wrong entirely! We almost certainly vote for the same people. I'm just so sick of people in our tribe who REFUSE to ever name their enemies. We're doing everything in good faith against people who hate us and want us to die. It's silly, and standing on some principles while we continually lose over and over is sad to watch

by snapcaster

3/26/2026 at 2:19:22 PM

> not be so worried if that side has people you don't like on it.

I think the point is that they don't like Sony music because they are so often on the wrong side, this time included.

by naasking

3/26/2026 at 12:53:20 PM

Presumably the parent’s objection to ISPs and copyright cartels is precisely that they are so frequently (and to such a large degree) unjust. FWIW, I don’t think the parent’s objection was subtle about that point, I’m frankly not sure how it was overlooked.

by throwaway894345

3/26/2026 at 4:01:00 PM

Frankly, I don't see how you can't parse that their point, as written, is "I'm on the side of bad guy A because bad guy B is worse than bad guy A" which is completely orthogonal to "A is in the right and B is in the wrong".

by creddit

3/26/2026 at 5:03:32 PM

If you look at the whole scenario, this will mean that Cox won't pass $1 billion dollars of punitive fines off to their customers, because, after all, the customers generate the money.

In reality, this would have made their innocent customers pay for the crimes of their guilty customers and made both Sony, and in the long run, Cox richer, because once paying an extra $5/month becomes normalized, then there's no way they're going to go back down in price just because the fine is paid off, any more than the government will ever stop charging tolls on a toll bridge that was paid for by tolls no matter how many times the cost of the toll bridge is paid off.

by BizarroLand

3/27/2026 at 2:28:36 AM

I said "allow it". It was mainly about my feelings. I can feel what I want. It also just so happens that Cox was in the right and Sony Music was in the wrong.

by jonny_eh

3/26/2026 at 5:23:01 PM

Because I'm a native English speaker and "worse" is definitely not orthogonal to "in the wrong".

by throwaway894345

3/26/2026 at 11:44:28 AM

[dead]

by jumpman_miya

3/26/2026 at 9:20:19 AM

It really has nothing to do with Sony as such though. This is a common finding; 9:0 is also a clear message. If service providers are held accountable then arms producers also have to be held accountable. Or politicians who drive up prices via racket scheme such as a certain guy using orange powder on his wrinkly face. Someone is stealing money from stock exchange - that is also becoming increasingly clear from the trading pattern. Krugman pointed this out not long ago, without naming anyone specifically but I guess we can kind of infer who was meant.

by shevy-java

3/26/2026 at 9:57:21 AM

It's always seemed fundamentally flawed to me that the exchange laws are designed to prevent people benefitting from insider information but then the entire purpose of the stock exchange is to make money by leveraging information asymmetry to make choices other rational actors wouldn't make because you have more knowledge or data than they do.

It's a very "leverage your info to make money no wait not like that" scheme. I think I just don't understand what the difference is between an insider who sits on a board (illegal) or has a nephew who's an SVP at the company (illegal) and a politician setting the laws that shape the whole industry (legal apparently?) or gets tips from same (legal apparently?).

by shadowgovt

3/26/2026 at 10:47:42 AM

> I think I just don't understand what the difference is between an insider who sits on a board (illegal) or has a nephew who's an SVP at the company (illegal) and a politician setting the laws that shape the whole industry (legal apparently?) or gets tips from same (legal apparently?).

This example is just standard issue corruption. Politician gets to exempt themselves, so they do.

> It's always seemed fundamentally flawed to me that the exchange laws are designed to prevent people benefitting from insider information but then the entire purpose of the stock exchange is to make money by leveraging information asymmetry to make choices other rational actors wouldn't make because you have more knowledge or data than they do.

Insider trading laws are designed to prevent people that can affect business outcomes from benefiting by affecting those outcomes. For example, a senior executive screwing up a crucial delivery to gain money from short positions.

The idea is society benefits from the assumption that all executives are ideally holding long positions on their business.

by lotsofpulp

3/26/2026 at 12:47:54 PM

The problem with insider trading is that incentivises people with power to do unlikely things with that power because private knowledge of the upcoming unlikely event is unusually profitable, especially if it is destructive. This ship may have sailed.

by QuadmasterXLII

3/26/2026 at 10:45:28 AM

That's why i would rather see insider trading made legal, but transparent.

Instead of quarterly filings, if you are considered an insider (or is affiliated with one), you are required to have your trades be instantly reported and be public the nanosecond you make them. You are allowed to make use of the insider info, as long as you adhere to these transparency measures.

by chii

3/26/2026 at 12:01:01 PM

> ...you are required to have your trades be instantly reported and be public the nanosecond you make them.

That doesn't do anything at all to remedy the situation. Better would be to require trades by insiders (and the particulars of those trades) to be locked in and publicly announced at least seven calendar days in advance. You need not announce the reason for the trade, but you must announce the amount of whatever it is you're selling and/or buying and the date at which the transaction will happen.

Yes, I'm aware of the whole "scheduled stock sale" thing that folks at a certain level have to do when trading in the stock & etc of the company they work for. IMO, that should be mandatory for all employees and their families.

by simoncion

3/26/2026 at 3:18:32 PM

It makes more sense when you realize that insider trading laws came after it was a problem, not before.

Before the insider trading laws, the stock market was much more volatile and was more akin to gambling for people out of the know. For people in the know, it was an easy way to extract wealth from those on the outside just looking at the numbers and publicly available information.

by cogman10

3/26/2026 at 12:55:43 PM

I don’t think the American right wing has any concerns about being perceived as inconsistent. They will reverse their positions overnight if it suits them, as they have illustrated every week for since the start of 2025 (most recently “no new wars / america first” to cheerleading the war in iran.

by throwaway894345

3/26/2026 at 5:02:09 AM

Yep, on the evil scale, Sony Music definitely ranks well ahead of Cox Cable.

Now, if this were Comcast vs. Sony Music, it would be a closer call, but I still think Sony would have the edge.

by shiroiuma

3/26/2026 at 10:54:30 AM

Cox cable pays legislators to limit people’s access to wired broadband internet service at their home (by banning government internet utilities), allowing them to charge higher prices due to having a monopoly. And they provide substandard asymmetric broadband because their customers have no choice.

Proof: compare the quality and price of their service in neighborhoods with access to fiber to the home as opposed to just having access to Cox via coaxial cable.

by lotsofpulp

3/26/2026 at 6:45:29 AM

I realize I'm in the minority but I side with whomever I think is right under the law, regardless of my (sometimes extreme) feelings about the parties and even about the law.

by jibal

3/26/2026 at 8:49:14 AM

A case only reaches the Supreme Court if there is confusion over who is right under the law. The Supreme Court decision itself is not a definitive guide to which side is right under the law, as they’ve overturned themselves multiple times. So how do you decide which party to side with?

by lazyasciiart

3/26/2026 at 9:11:47 AM

Your view on the law seems a bit alien to me. My opinions on what the rules of the law should roughly look like, are largely independent of who specifically is involved in a legal dispute. Sure I guess if Hitler was being sued and the only way to stop him was this lawsuit by Sony, I would probably concede that on balance it's better to have a slightly worse legal standard around copyright. Otherwise, I think having a law that best reflects my moral views and creates the best incentives for society in general, far outweighs how i feel about the plaintiffs.

As for how I arrive on my views, it's obviously not an entirely rational process, but the rules you get from viewing property rights and self-ownership as fundamental seem to lead to the most preferable outcomes to me. If I were forced to adopt a more deontological philosophy, it's also the one that has the fewest obviously absurd conclusions, though not entirely. From this it's, in my opinion, pretty obvious to be skeptical of copyright law more generally (Ayn Rand would disagree) and therefore I welcome any precedent that weakens it.

by defmacr0

3/27/2026 at 3:11:46 AM

I just told you: I side with whomever I think is right under the law.

And your first sentence is not remotely true--or rather, it is quite conceptually confused. Whose "confusion" are you talking about? Not mine, generally. There are of course disagreements about which side is right under the law, but often those disagreements are a result of bad faith--take just about every case Trump has ever appealed up to the SCOTUS. And many of the decisions made by the current crop of right wing ideologues on the Court are made in bad faith, especially Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, in that order of corruption. Many of the "disagreements" are based on bogus "textualism" and "originalism" frameworks that are applied completely ad hoc and hypocritically and were invented by conservatives solely in order to provide them with a basis for making rulings based on their ideology (the historical record is quite clear on this).

Anyway, the point was that I decide based on my view of the law, not who the parties are. Since you seem to completely miss the point, have poor reading comprehension, and are just adding muddle, I won't comment further.

by jibal

3/29/2026 at 9:19:40 AM

Right. The law is an objective concept, so clear that there can be no confusion, and even apparent disagreement with your objective perception is really just people lying. I’m not missing your point, you’re just disagreeing with mine.

by lazyasciiart

3/30/2026 at 2:13:20 AM

So many strawmen. The only lies here are about what I said.

> The law is an objective concept

I didn't say that or anything like it and I don't believe it.

> so clear that there can be no confusion

I didn't say that or anything like it and I don't believe it.

> and even apparent disagreement with your objective perception is really just people lying.

I didn't say that or anything like it, said nothing about having "objective perception", and said nothing about disagreement with this nonexistent thing, and said nothing about anyone lying.

I made no claim to objectivity, said nothing about clarity of law, or anything else that you're dwelling on here, only that I make decisions based on my own understanding--my phrase was "I think". And yes, you did miss or ignore my point and continue to ignore it while inventing supposed points of mine that have nothing to do with me (further instances of "have poor reading comprehension, and are just adding muddle"). My only point was that who I side with isn't based on what I think of the parties involved.

And what point of yours am I disagreeing with? You said

> A case only reaches the Supreme Court if there is confusion over who is right under the law.

This is factually false, as I and others pointed out. This is all I disagreed with. It's also not relevant to what I had written ... I'll stipulate it to be true if that helps. It's certainly true if "only" is replaced with "sometimes". As I noted, there is typically disagreement about who is right under the law, but "confusion" need not be present. Sometimes SCOTUS--especially this SCOTUS--invites cases from parties they are ideologically aligned with just so they can reinterpret the law to agree with their preferences. Of course, the other party normally disagrees, but even that doesn't always hold, especially with this administration, which is happy to reverse cases brought by their predecessors.

> The Supreme Court decision itself is not a definitive guide to which side is right under the law, as they’ve overturned themselves multiple times.

I agree with the basic point (while not technically accurate ... due to Marbury v Madison, the law is what the SCOTUS says it is), but it's not relevant to anything I said.

> So how do you decide which party to side with?

As I told you: based on what I think. Can I be wrong about the law? Of course. But again, my fallibility and the court's fallibility and whether my thinking aligns with the thinking of the court etc. ad nauseam is not what I was talking about ... what I was talking about was considering the law rather than who the parties were. That's it; that's all. And I made this crystal clear. Whoever it is you think you're disagreeing with, it's not me. You want to have an argument about whether one can make objective decisions about the law, but I never claimed any such ability. All I said is that I side with who ==> I <== think (a fallible process, certainly) is right under the law, NOT WHAT I THINK OF THE PARTIES--not which party I think is more evil, which was the conversation I responded to. That was it---a point about my own behavior. That's all.

JFC ... over and out forever. (If I accidentally see this thread again I shall avert my eyes.)

by jibal

3/26/2026 at 9:05:29 AM

Good, contributory copyright infringement is an invention of the courts and I’m glad that finally made it to the Supreme Court

Bigger deal than people think

I believe this removes the liability from seeding just a chunk of a torrent, we can get those seed ratios back up without VPNs and seed boxes

by yieldcrv

3/26/2026 at 11:35:48 AM

So the Supreme Court unanimously let Cox off the hook basically ruling that just providing internet access isn't enough to pin contributory infringement on an ISP, even if users are clearly pirating. Big win for ISPs, tough news for the labels.

by marco-erppilot

3/26/2026 at 1:51:21 PM

I mean you wouldn't hold verizon accountable for someone using their cellphone for a criminal conspiracy would you?

by ch4s3

3/27/2026 at 12:12:46 AM

The only positive thing I can say about Cox is that they fought this fight and won.

Cox stil sucks, no symmetic B/W in 2026? Cox thinks you only need to upload at 10% of the download speed you are paying for. i.e 300Mbit down, 30Mbit up speed limits (just an example).

At least I have options where I am. So many don't.

by spl757

3/25/2026 at 6:02:02 PM

Hilariously (and appropriately), the decision cites Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., also known as the "Betamax case."

> (a) “The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another.” Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 434.

> In Sony, copyright owners sued the maker and the retailers of the Betamax video tape recorder. Id., at 422. The tape recorder could be used to record copyrighted television programs for later personal viewing, which would not constitute infringement. Id., at 449. On the other hand, it could also be used to reproduce and sell copyrighted television programming, which would constitute infringement. Ibid. The lower court found the Betamax maker liable because the tape recorder was “not suitable for any substantial noninfringing use” and infringement “was either the most conspicuous use or the major use of the Betamax product.” Id., at 428 (internal quotation marks omitted). This Court reversed, concluding that “[t]he Betamax is . . . capable of substantial noninfringing uses”—like personal use—so “sale of such equipment to the general public does not constitute contributory infringement.” Id., at 456.

by jetrink

3/25/2026 at 6:43:41 PM

> The lower court found the Betamax maker liable because the tape recorder was “not suitable for any substantial noninfringing use” and infringement “was either the most conspicuous use or the major use of the Betamax product.”

I don't know anyone who sold television recordings, it was always for personal use. How could the lower court get this so wrong? Was this just one uninformed judge? Or was this actually less certain at the time?

by frenchtoast8

3/25/2026 at 7:26:58 PM

The Ninth Circuit court of appeals understood correctly what the primary use of Betamax would be, but they believed that personal home recording was not fair use, and was thus copyright infringement. They interpreted the law as only allowing libraries to record TV or radio broadcasts.

The Supreme Court ruling for this case found that time-shifting was fair use, but only by a narrow 5-4 margin. Fair use could have gone in a completely different direction over the last 40 years if just one judge had voted differently on Betamax.

by pavon

3/25/2026 at 8:26:18 PM

We have to remember that at the time of the decision, there really wasn't any source of things to copy with a Betamax recording device besides commercial broadcast TV and other copyrighted materials.

Camcorders and such devices where you could make your own content were very rare, if available at all.

by bombcar

3/26/2026 at 5:36:02 AM

I don't think that justifies the decision though. People did personally own cameras. Also, broadcast TV might want to use it for copies themselves.

by Aerroon

3/26/2026 at 1:39:10 AM

Camcorders were not, but cameras and portable battery powered tape decks were.

by indymike

3/25/2026 at 9:54:02 PM

This speaks to first principles. I don't want judges making law - and any good judge doesn't want to make law. Laws are from elected legislatures. Of course this is all wishful thinking.

by bahmboo

3/25/2026 at 10:34:07 PM

If a judge had ruled differently in the Betamax case, we'd still have the ability to vote in representatives who'd enact a law that explicitly gave us the right to record for personal use. Judges should only have power to decide what a law means in situations where it's not already clear how or if the law applies.

by autoexec

3/26/2026 at 1:06:13 AM

Isn't "judges making law" a key feature of common law systems? IANAL, obviously, I would know the answer to such a basic question if I were. But this is my understanding, and given that this case is in the US and the US is based on common law, I'm genuinely curious if you're advocating the US change to civil law?

by Henchman21

3/26/2026 at 2:35:14 AM

Special interest groups throwing their money at suitable cases of random people to further their interests is not a key feature of common law, it's a very unfortunate side effect.

by jojobas

3/26/2026 at 5:15:46 AM

Judge's rulings set precedence. So as a judge you can point to another judge, usually up the chain, and say "this is what those laws mean". Legislators write laws that are very broad and ill defined. Almost on purpose. Then the judges have to figure it out. I don't like that. It is an ill defined spec and we dump the details onto a judge who may or may not have any idea of what is going on.

by bahmboo

3/26/2026 at 8:23:26 AM

As it happens, natural language is "ill defined". This is an important piece of the argument for teleological justice, where the law is framed and interpreted according to the intent of the sovereign rather than some linguistic literalism.

By the involved professionals laws are commonly understood as norms, i.e. what is established through judgement in court when the instructions from the sovereign (and sometimes sources like common sense) are interpreted and applied to so called facts presented to the court during proceedings.

In this sense, what the politicians have their minions type down into some document isn't actually the law. Common law systems give judges more leeway in how to frame and interpret the sources of law than e.g. the swedish system, where politicians apply a process that produces a series of documents that explain and teleologically ground the text that parliament then votes on. This gives the sovereign a larger degree of influence over the instructions that judges use when creating law through their judgements.

As I understand it, this leeway in common law systems is thought to balance the latent tyranny of the sovereign, and function similar to constitutional courts in that judges can take the view of the people into account to a larger extent.

Not that I'd trust US jurisdictions in anything but certain business law settings, but some clever people thought and deliberated a lot when designing what they have over there.

by cess11

3/27/2026 at 1:20:38 AM

So what is the difference between "setting precedence" and "making the law" in your view? Essentially there isn't one? I think legislators write vague laws not almost on purpose, but absolutely with purpose: to leave it up to the judge to interpret. But then, you don't like that judges exercise judgement, which is frankly really quite puzzling to me. That is explicitly their job, it's right there in the name. But why don't you like that? Oftentimes, someone has to figure it out. Why not someone who is used to exercising good judgement? You're absolutely right that it's an ill-defined spec, but we're not gathering requirements to develop some application, we're talking about law?

by Henchman21

3/26/2026 at 10:28:02 AM

This feels unavoidable when you have a new circumstance turning up in court? There's no "decline to have an opinion" option, the ruling has to go one way or the other.

How does this work in Civil Law jurisdictions? Do you get the opposite of precedent, similar cases having different outcomes until the legislature resolves it?

(it is something of a problem for the US that most of its really big important freedoms come from courts against more repressive legislatures, though)

by pjc50

3/25/2026 at 6:48:58 PM

I had a relative who setup a kinda "blockbuster" type service recording things and offering them out for rental. It really took off for VHS when he got HBO and recorded movies and then rented those. It wasnt a very lucrative hustle but it was an instance of what they didnt want to have happen

by lvspiff

3/25/2026 at 7:05:52 PM

Absolutely this happened, but would you say that was the primary use case of the recording capabilities?

I'm trying to understand how a judge would say that the only practical use of backups were copyright infringement, since that is completely contrary to both my experiences and what I believe to be common sense. If the answer to my confusion is that this actually was the major use case and my experiences were rare, then that's fine. Otherwise, I can't help believe this is yet another case in recent history where judges are completely backwards on technological understanding, or maybe even under influence from copyright holders.

by frenchtoast8

3/25/2026 at 7:32:21 PM

This is the case that determined that recording TV broadcasts for your own personal use was not copyright infringement. They understood what the tech was used for, but they didn't know that this use was non-infringing until they made that decision.

by wat10000

3/26/2026 at 6:59:48 AM

> Absolutely this happened, but would you say that was the primary use case of the recording capabilities?

I don't think I can understate the amount that I hate this line of reasoning.

Suppose we apply this logic to writable CDs. Some drives could only read but not write CDs and those devices cost less than the ones that could write. Moreover, the early writable drives were stupid expensive and because of that most people in those days only had readers.

Then in those early days, the usage of the drives would skew more heavily towards piracy, because it would be more common to spend $1000+ more on a CD writer if you're operating a commercial piracy operation and keeping it busy than if you just want to write something to a single CD instead of an entire $20 box of floppy disks once or twice a year.

A few years later the price of the writable drives has come down to almost as low as the price of the read-only drives and everybody has them and is using them for all kinds of legitimate things. But that doesn't happen if pointing to a high initial rate of piracy can get them banned before they get widely adopted for other purposes.

There's a reason why they said "substantial non-infringing use" instead of asking what percent of existing use it is at some specific point in time.

by AnthonyMouse

3/25/2026 at 9:11:38 PM

In the late 80s and early 90s there was a great deal of blatantly pirated SF, Fantasy, and Anime videotapes for sale at conventions, typically recorded from OTA, satellite, or cable for Western stuff. Anime was typically better quality, copied from Japanese originals with fan dubs added. Some of it was "at cost" where you were paying other fans for the their time, equipment, and the tape. Others were more obviously for-profit, with higher prices and sometimes better quality.

To be clear, this was the only way to get most of the stuff being traded and sold. TV shows or films with no VHS release, or anime with no official dub or American format release.

by GolfPopper

3/26/2026 at 12:24:40 AM

As a kid I used to buy bootleg Japanese Dragonball Z tapes from a legit store at the mall!

They sold them under the counter. I just wanted to know what was going to happen ahead of all my friends haha.

by daveidol

3/25/2026 at 7:50:12 PM

> How could the lower court get this so wrong?

There are no standards for lower court judges. They frequently do things that are grossly illegal.

Here's a US lower court judge who spontaneously ordered that a child's name be changed because of the judge's religious beliefs: https://volokh.com/2013/08/12/judge-orders-that-childs-name-...

by thaumasiotes

3/25/2026 at 8:20:23 PM

> I don't know anyone who sold television recordings, it was always for personal use.

The claim was that recording for personal use was still copyright infringement

by HDThoreaun

3/25/2026 at 7:30:05 PM

Given that that judgement was made in 1981, it's possible that the judges (who were likely a bunch of depression era old dudes) had zero knowledge or exposure, and had never even thought much about, personal video recording before a bunch of lawyers tried to explain it to them during the case.

We have see this happen repeatedly with modern tech cases.

by WarmWash

3/25/2026 at 8:25:10 PM

Judges asking things that are obvious to us make for great headlines and quotes, like "what is a website?" or "what is an API?" and "shows" how out of touch they are, but like a judge (trying to) define pornography, making sure the plaintiff, the defendant, and the judge are on the same page seems to me (I am not a lawyer) just good procedure. First everyone has to agree on what a website or an API is before passing judgment on legal matters concerning them that all parties will abide by.

by fragmede

3/26/2026 at 1:05:40 AM

Yeah, that makes sense. For the purposes of this court case we’re trying today, is an FTP server a website because you can view it in a browser? An Nginx server pointing to an empty directory? One that only returns 404s? One that only accepts POST and not GET? And is a website an API, because an automated client could send a request and get back a machine-parsable result? Is a JSON response an API? An XML response? An XHTML response? An RSS feed? An RSS feed that’s dynamically generated in response to query parameters?

Lots of things seem facepalmingly obvious until you start exploring the edges.

by kstrauser

3/26/2026 at 8:56:45 AM

I worked with a team of developers who were totally confused by my attempt to call the thing we were creating a library or SDK and not an API. We built and released a JavaScript client library that talked to a proprietary server product. But if you were a customer, and you used it to build a JavaScript app, you would write code against the library’s API, right?

In the course of that discussion we definitely had some “what is an API” questions.

by lazyasciiart

3/25/2026 at 9:03:06 PM

I doubt that. Home video recording, while a new thing in 1981, was not substantially different from making personal mixtapes on tape from radio or vinyl records which had been popular for decades. My grandfather had dozens of 4 track mixtape reels he made in the 60s. You could even go further back and say it wasn't any different than taking a photo of artwork for personal use. You didn't have to be that young in 1981 to understand what home video recording is.

by wildzzz

3/26/2026 at 5:28:05 AM

They had the ability to record video at home LONG before 1981. People had handheld "Super 8" film cameras ages before this, which they used to film their own home movies. Of course, this is a little different from videocassettes, just like LPs are different from audio cassettes, but it didn't take a genius to see that home video was going to move to videocassettes before long, they just needed cameras that could record directly to them instead of to film.

by shiroiuma

3/26/2026 at 11:19:30 AM

And in fact you had big video cameras attached to battery packs going back to at least the 70s. The tech existed. It was just clunky and barely suitable for consumers.

by ghaff

3/25/2026 at 7:47:01 PM

Even complete legal novices like me know about the Sony/Betamax case, FWIW. It would shock me if a judge ruling on copyright implications of a technology didn't know about it.

by AlexCoventry

3/26/2026 at 1:25:09 AM

They’re talking about the judges on the Sony/Betamax case, not the new one.

by jeffgreco

3/25/2026 at 6:49:22 PM

I suppose that selling is not necessary, distribution is. Record a movie off cable TV, share with your friends, and lo and behold, they're not going to buy the licensed VHS tape! And maybe even not going to subscribe to cable TV! Losses, losses everywhere.

by nine_k

3/26/2026 at 4:49:27 AM

Several years ago, I've read about a similar case somewhere in Europe (Germany?): a group of friends gathered together for a party, and it was either some show on the cable, or they blared some broadcasted music on the loudspeakers, or something, but somehow the police got involved, and the guy at whose house they've gathered was found guilty for illegal broadcasting/retransmission, because apparently, if more than 3 people (without familial bonds) watch the same TV or something like that, then yeah, it's broadcasting, and you need the license and the rights to the material.

by Joker_vD

3/25/2026 at 7:46:01 PM

I remember in 1980, when our school got a VCR and television (on a cart to allow it to be moved from one classroom to another). one of my teachers said that she wasn’t allowed to record something off the air at home and then show it in the classroom.

by dhosek

3/25/2026 at 6:28:41 PM

They were right. I never sold a taped VCR, but my parents used it to time shift Saturday morning cartoons every week.

by purpleflame1257

3/25/2026 at 6:51:28 PM

Time shifting for personal use is expressly legal (making a personal copy). It was also an early form of ad-blocking, because a VHS recorder could stop recording at a set time, thus skip a block of commercials, and then continue. There were suits about that, too.

by nine_k

3/25/2026 at 10:13:29 PM

The Betamax case that GP mentions is the same case that established that time-shifting is not copyright infringment. The law and courts were previously both mute on the subject.

by da_chicken

3/26/2026 at 2:05:33 PM

... because if _use_ of a product creates a liability for the maker, you are very quickly headed toward liability for gun manufacturers. [ed: this is very much discussed in the decision, by the by]

Expect to see heavy lobbying from the music and video industry to create some kind of "Know your Customer" regime internet service providers in order to create such a liability.

I wouldn't call this a slam dunk for privacy or liberty, given what it is going to force the various actors to do in response.

For now, though, let the file sharing flow!

by numbsafari

3/25/2026 at 11:47:54 PM

Yes, the expression "hoist by their own petard" occurred to me when I saw that.

by pdonis

3/25/2026 at 10:43:48 PM

[dead]

by AlBugdy

3/25/2026 at 3:30:45 PM

A tiny victory. Copyright should not be more than a decade. This intellectual property system is one of the worst things to happen in modern society is what I would have said a few years ago, now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.

by thot_experiment

3/25/2026 at 3:58:14 PM

I agree with you that 10 years is more than enough time for corporations to turn a healthy profit on something (not that they can't continue to make money off of a work after it has entered the public domain), but this wasn't a small victory.

If every ISP were at risk of being on the hook for endless billions in damages because of what their users did it would mean that ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of piracy. It's worth noting that cox was actually already doing this in a limited number of circumstances, and the media industry still wasn't satisfied.

The media industry insisted that they needed the power to get people's accounts terminated even though it would have left many people, including fully innocent ones, cut off from the internet entirely. This was a big deal, and I'm honestly surprised to see this supreme court do the right thing.

by autoexec

3/26/2026 at 10:48:43 AM

> ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of piracy.

and this is already true today, except instead of being ISPs, it's youtube and other user generated content platforms.

by chii

3/26/2026 at 4:01:12 PM

Youtube was strong armed into agreeing to that by the RIAA to an extent. They could absolutely do better though by including human oversight and/or including it earlier in the process. Google has enough money that they can easily afford to pay workers to do the job and not screw over their users through their broken copyright system, but they choose not to.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 3:56:42 PM

I'm not sure I agree that any single fixed term makes sense. Rather, I think it'd be better if the exponential cost to society (in terms of works that don't happen, and works that don't happen based on those works that didn't happen and so on compounding) was just part of the yearly renewal price. Do maybe everyone gets 7 years flat to start with, then it costs $100*1.3^(year). So after another 25 years it'd be around $70.5k renewal. At 50 years it'd be $50 million. At 75 years it'd be $35 billion. Fixed amount and exponential can of course be shifted around here but the idea would be to encourage creators to use works hard and if they couldn't make it work not sit on them but release them. Once in awhile something would be such a big hit it'd be worth keeping a long time, and that's ok, but society gets its due too. And most works would be allowed to lapse as they stopped being worth it.

Another alternative/additional approach would be to split up the nature of copyright, vs an all or nothing total monopoly. Let there be 7-10 years of total copyright, then another 7-14 years where no exclusivity of where it's sold or DRM is allowed, then 7/14/21 years where royalties can still be had but licensing is mandatory at FRAND rates, then finally some period of "creditright" where the creator has no control or licensing, but if they wish can still require any derivative works to give them a spot in the credits.

I think there is a lot of unexplored territory for IP, and wish the conversations were less binary.

by xoa

3/26/2026 at 1:09:24 AM

I still believe IP shouldn’t be protected by courts unless property taxes are paid on it. The IP holder should declare its taxable value, and that value should be its declared value in an infringement lawsuit. Oh, you said that movie was worth $1 for tax purposes? Now you can’t sue for more than $1 if someone copies it. You want to sue for $1B in damages? Ok, but plan on paying taxes on $1B.

by kstrauser

3/25/2026 at 4:05:39 PM

I think this is a great idea.

Free then make it cost more. A lot could enter the public domain, and valuable IP could be kept by companies as long as they’re willing to pay.

by acomjean

3/25/2026 at 5:32:09 PM

I think that's a horrible idea. There's zero benefit to society in letting corporations like Disney that can afford to pay keep works out of the public domain longer than others.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 7:15:22 PM

> There's zero benefit to society

Wouldn't it result in additional tax revenue while preventing Disney's movies from proliferating throughout society unimpeded?

In all honesty, I really think you should think this idea through. Compared to the status quo, where we get zero tax revenue from intellectual property, this system would guarantee an expiration based on commercial viability. It couldn't sustain forever because the scale would always accelerate at a rate faster than any economy could sustain it. But it would have this additional benefit in that the more some intellectual property becomes commercially sustainable, the more revenue society can collect.

How does that even begin to approach horrible when it's magnitudes more equitable than the status quo?

by chipdale

3/26/2026 at 12:56:54 AM

> Wouldn't it result in additional tax revenue while preventing Disney's movies from proliferating throughout society unimpeded?

I mean they already pay taxes (allegedly). When artists create good works that become popular the state also gets sales taxes from the consumer side as money changes hands in exchange for the work. If we just wanted money we'd be better served by getting rid of the loopholes and tax games the wealthy can take advantage of to avoid paying their share.

I'm pretty adverse to the idea of codifying a system where people with vast sums of money can pay for extra rights under the law. If anything we should offer more support to small artists and not turn them into an underclass, but at a minimum we should enforce an even playing field. It's a bit twisted to call a "rights for those who can pay" system "equitable"

Remember that the goal here is to end rent seeking, not allow it but only for the wealthy for as long as it's profitable for them. If the tax is high enough to stop the bad behavior we might as well have just banned it in the first place because if it isn't high enough to stop it, then the tax just becomes another cost of doing business and that's ignoring the fact that more tax money doesn't nessesarily benefit society to the extent that it should. Far too many tax dollars end up in the pockets of private corporations seeking profits (although that's a different problem)

The fact is that our economy and our culture will both benefit by works entering the public domain as that allows new creators to build on and explore those ideas which means more people being hired to work on those new projects, more products for consumers to purchase from retailers, and more taxes going to the government from a wider variety of sources which is itself a very good thing since mega-corps with monopolies on our culture and the tax revenue those cultural works generate can give those corporations a greater influence over government.

by autoexec

3/30/2026 at 2:58:32 AM

>Remember that the goal here is to end rent seeking, not allow it but only for the wealthy for as long as it's profitable for them.

Society would work a LOT better if there were a lot more rent-seeking against extremely wealthy people and companies.

by shiroiuma

3/26/2026 at 1:37:44 AM

i understand your logic , but there's a problem with that assertion.

the thought is that the copyright value accrued out of some accident and thus, the owner does not deserve its value . That thinking is flawed. If anything, the copyright owner contributed to the equity accrued to the copyright. They should be able to pay the high price to keep adding value to it. This does not discriminate. IN fact, i would say the opposite, what you are proposing, feels like stealing.

If i dump millions into developing a copyrighted work, why could any random artist with nothing to lose be able to exploit the work by paying a small/no fee? This seems incredibly unfair. Do you agree?

by IG_Semmelweiss

3/26/2026 at 9:34:44 AM

> the thought is that the copyright value accrued out of some accident and thus, the owner does not deserve its value .

The owner deserves to make as much money from their product as they can, but they should only be able to exclusively profit from that work in any form for 10 years. That's entirely fair.

Copyright isn't the natural order of things. It's an extraordinary restriction on our freedoms. If I hear a song, there's no kind of natural law making it wrong for me to sing it while out in public the next day. There's nothing morally wrong with that either. It's a massive imposition for the government to tell a free person that they can't share certain stories with others.

For almost all of human history copyright did not exist. The stories that were told, and which became foundational to all stories being told today, were not protected by copyright. People who heard those stories just retold the ones they liked again and again making whatever changes they felt like making and the most popular versions of those stories spread and gained a foothold on the culture. That is the natural order.

The reason copyright law was created was not so that people can profit for as long as possible by restricting everyone else's ability to retell stories or sing the songs they've heard. It was created to promote the creation of new creative works. That aim can be easily accomplished in a single decade.

Locking up vast amounts of our culture behind copyright for ~100 years or more is what sounds like theft to me. Not only are copyright terms of that length excessive, but they are so prohibitively excessive that they actually hinder the creation of new creative works as well as the ability for people to profit from those newly created works.

For example, consider the problems encountered trying to make and sell Sita Sings the Blues (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_The_Blues). The artist behind that project went to extreme efforts to put her work out into the universe. It's easy to see how many others in her situation would have been forced to give up or could become disheartened enough to abandon the project after realizing that there could be no monetary profit in it.

When a work enters the public domain that doesn't even mean that the original author or previous owner of a copyright can't continue to make profit on that work. It just means that other people can build off of that work and/or can publish/sell/distribute that work to others. That's perfectly fair too. I've personally paid for works that were in the public domain on multiple occasions.

by autoexec

3/26/2026 at 4:17:00 PM

You are conflating copyright with free expression.

That's not correct and the law is clear on this respect. No one has standing to sue you if you decide to sing in public a Michael Jackson song. However, the moment you start selling tickets to the presentation, that's something entirely different.

You are literally leveraging the fact that someone put that song on the map. You didn't create it. You didn't promote it. You didn't do anything, in fact, except try to profit from it.

Libertarians still believe in property rights. Property can be tangible or intangible.

The point can easily be made with a simple peek into history. No one that recorded anything intangible, like a song, was selling it to others for commercial use because they didn't understand that intangible they had just created had value, but the moment they did, morally, they felt it was wrong and sought the courts for redress. There are examples in history:

In fact, the oldest documented examples of creators pushing back against unauthorized copying predate any formal copyright laws by centuries anda few stretch back to over a millennium! [1] [2]

[1] https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/10/04/the-world%E2%80%9...

[2] https://course.oeru.org/oerdsc/copyright-and-licensing/copyr...

Why is this important ? Because the oppression you mention of freedom, in order to happen, must be codified by government. If you have this issue going so far back in time, when government hadn't codified anything, its a clear indication that the issue trascends code and goes to the heart of what is moral and inmoral.

This debate of whether you own an idea, trascended the codification of the idea in government "repressing your freedoms" . The fact of the matter is, we believe strongly in freedom, as long as it doesn't transgress the freedoms of others. This is key. In this case, the freedom to reap the rewards of your hard work should not be infringed by the work of another. You are not more important than someone else. This is a basic tenet of liberty

by IG_Semmelweiss

3/27/2026 at 2:09:33 AM

> You are conflating copyright with free expression.

No, copyright is a direct infringement on free expression. We've just tolerated it because the trade off was worth it. Not worth it because people would get rich and that was import to us. Worth it because having a chance to make money on a creative work encourages the creation of more creative works and having more creative works was important to us.

I'm sure that there were many times in history when someone came up with a good story and got mad that somebody else told a version of that story that others liked better. Not only is the ability to share stories more important than that one guy's feelings, but the result is better stories for everybody. Once people starting selling their creative works and it became easier to copy them we agreed that it was important that people had an opportunity to make money off their efforts so we'd have more works and that's where we started limiting people's freedom. When those limits are reasonable, it's a good deal. A balance where briefly people wouldn't be able to copy someone's work so they had a chance to make money and then later everybody could do whatever they wanted with it.

Recently the media industry has bribed their way into making the restrictions increasingly unreasonable, but we still want people to be able to have a chance to make money on their work so we just need to readjust to something more like what copyright started out as and less like what it's become.

> No one has standing to sue you if you decide to sing in public a Michael Jackson song.

That's wrong. There are performance rights (see https://copyrightlately.com/glossary/public-performance/) and it just requires you to have a public "audience". This is an issue that cover bands (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rocking-without-regrets-truth...) and karaoke singers run into and the way it's handled is that the venues are typically licensed to allow it.

Performance rights were what kept restaurants from singing happy birthday to their customers or paying Warner/Chappell for the privilege until a lawsuit clarified that they didn't have the rights to the song in the first place. By that point they'd already collected 50,000,000 in license fees though because performance rights are real and enforceable.

Realistically, nobody is going to sue you for singing a copyrighted song in public around others, but they could and there's a decent chance you'd lose that legal battle. Similarly, many small businesses will have a radio on or a CD playing that their customers can hear. They can be sued for that as well. Enforcement in that setting is rare enough though that small players take their chances, but big companies with fat wallets are prime targets for lawsuits so they tend to have a licensed solution to avoid massive fines.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 5:52:35 PM

Disney are able to pay that amount because their IP is still generating massive income.

I'm not a fan of Disney at all, just pointing out what i belive might be the flaw in the argument.

by awesome_dude

3/25/2026 at 6:04:15 PM

> Disney are able to pay that amount because their IP is still generating massive income.

That's entirely irrelevant though. The point of copyright isn't to protect income. The point is to encourage the creation of new works. Disney doesn't need 100+ years of exclusive profits on something to encourage them to create new works. Nobody does.

I'd even argue that the more popular a work is the more important it is that it enter the public domain sooner rather than later. The less cultural relevancy something has when it enters the public domain the less likely it will inspire new works to be created.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 7:38:51 PM

With respect - copyright's protection of income is the point

That's, by design, the tool used to encourage people to invest their time into producing works.

We would not be having this conversation at all if people weren't able to make money of these works - there'd be no point to copyright at all if there wasn't money to be made (by the artists) and the reproduction of their works wasn't restricting their ability to generate that income (for themselves, or their agents).

I want to emphasise that I am not arguing in favour of the system, only how and why it works this way.

by awesome_dude

3/25/2026 at 10:25:02 PM

> That's, by design, the tool used to encourage people to invest their time into producing works.

The tool used was control over distribution. If income was the point copyright law could just hand tax payer money over to anyone who created something. That'd guarantee income instead of the system we have which allows artists to invest in the creation of a work and still never make a dime on it. Ultimately though, I do see your point and I agree that making it possible to earn enough money to justify the creation, publishing, and distribution of a creative work was a large part of the intention along with the establishment of the public domain.

I probably should have phrased that as "The point of copyright isn't to protect income until the work is no longer highly profitable"

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 6:40:19 PM

Another thing that doesn't get brought up enough: Copyright is not really needed to encourage creation.

Suppose Copyright as a concept was overturned and no longer existed. Would Disney just say "Well, it was a great run, but we're going to close up shop and no longer create works." Would an independent artist who needs to paint something decide not to just because it couldn't be copyright?

"The creation of new works" doesn't need to be encouraged. It's the default. Cavemen still carved on cave walls without copyright.

by ryandrake

3/25/2026 at 7:05:58 PM

You're absolutely right that artists can't stop themselves from creating, but I think that a reasonable amount of protection still does encourage more works.

Many works require a good deal of investment and time and if people had little to no chance of making money or breaking even on that investment a lot of works wouldn't get made.

Another nice aspect of copyright law is that it establishes where a work originated. Authorship gets lost in a lot of the things we treat as if they don't have copyrights. For example memes, or the way every MP3 of a parody song on P2P platforms ended up listing Weird Al as the artist regardless of his involvement. It also happens in cases where copyright really doesn't exist like with recipes and as a result we don't really know who first came up with many of the foods we love. A very limited copyright term would more firmly establish who we should thank for the things we enjoy.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 11:11:41 PM

IMO, copyright is something that should be shorter the bigger the media producer is.

The reason we need a copyright in the first place is to stop someone like disney just vacuuming up popular works and republishing them because they have the money to do it.

Disney, however, doesn't need almost any copyright to still encourage them to make new products. They'll do that regardless.

For an individual author, copyright should basically be for their lifetime. If they sell it, the copyright should only last 5 years after that.

A company like disney should get copyrights for like 1 year.

But also the type of media matters. IMO, news outlets and journalists should get copyrights for 1 day max. Old news is almost worthless and it's in the public interest that news be generally accessible and recordable.

by cogman10

3/26/2026 at 12:25:16 AM

This always pisses me off.

Disney didn't invent (e.g.) Beauty and the Beast. They took an idea and a story in the public domain and retold it. Then they claim ownership of that and sue anyone who uses the same character(s) for the next 75+ years.

This is not "encouraging creation". This is strip-mining our shared culture.

So yeah, agree 100% that this kind of corporate theft needs to be stopped. I can't see that happening in the face of all the money though.

by marcus_holmes

3/26/2026 at 5:03:29 AM

With an increasing cost for age, they would eventually be paying an absurd amount for content of decreasing value. Either they end up funding the government massively, or they decide to drop commercially irrelevant copyright.

by Gigachad

3/26/2026 at 5:36:00 AM

How does getting tons of money from Disney into a government's tax coffers not benefit society? That's money that the government wouldn't need to directly collect from citizens other ways.

by shiroiuma

3/26/2026 at 10:02:00 AM

Money going to the government in the form of taxes doesn't necessarily result in a benefit to society at all, let alone one that justifies keeping people from being able to access and expand on their own culture while also killing off all the economic and culture benefits new works would bring.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 5:47:37 PM

If Disney had to pay the federal government a few billion each to keep absolute control over their oldest works, every year, no tax games, that would be pretty great for society. But it's also probably true that the tax games would indeed ensue. Something something low trust, we can't have nice things.

by underlipton

3/25/2026 at 7:01:24 PM

I think I like the idea, but I can't help wondering if it would have unforeseen consequences.

Could this approach undermine the protections afforded by open-source licenses? (IANAL.)

by foresto

3/25/2026 at 8:38:35 PM

>I think I like the idea, but I can't help wondering if it would have unforeseen consequences.

As I said in a sibling comment, quickie comments on HN should be taken more as mental stimulation and kickoff points for further discussion as opposed to "final bill that has been revised in committee and is going to the floor for a full vote". The details of implementation are certainly critical, and not trivial either! I'm fully in support of thinking through various use cases. But part of why I'm interested in alternate approaches is that they might give us finer grained tools.

>Could this approach undermine the protections afforded by open-source licenses? (IANAL.)

I have actually considered that as well but didn't add it into a quickie comment. If we take the second path of approaches I listed there, then thinking about it all open source software would fall under a special even more permissive class of the tier 3, in that it already has "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" licensing for all right? Except that it's also free. The motivation here is the "advancement of the useful arts & sciences" and the public good, so having it be explicit that "if you're releasing under an open source license and thus giving up your standard first, second, and part of your third period of IP rights and monopoly, you're excluded from needing to pay a license fee because you've already enable the public to make derivative works for free for decades when they wouldn't otherwise anyway."

All that said, I'll also ask fwiw if it'd even be that big a deal given the pace of development? I do think it'd be both ideal and justified if OSS had a longer period for free, that's still a square deal to the public IMO. But like, even if an OSS work went out protection (and keep in mind that a motivated community that could raise even a few thousand dollars would be able to just pay for an extra decade no problem, the cost doesn't really ramp up for awhile [which might itself be considered a flaw?]) after 10 years, how much is it worth it that 2016 era OSS (and no changes since remember, it's a constantly rolling window) now could have proprietary works be worth it against 10 year old proprietary software all getting pushed into the public domain far faster? That's worth some contemplation. Maybe requiring that source/assets be provided to the Library of Congress or something and is released at the same time the work loses copyright would be a good balance, having all that available for down the road would be a huge win vs what we've seen up until now.

Anyway, all food for thought is all.

by xoa

3/25/2026 at 11:07:24 PM

> quickie comments on HN should be taken more as mental stimulation and kickoff points for further discussion

Agreed, and my comment was aimed at exactly that. :)

An example of my concern: What would happen to GPL-licensed software if the copyright expired quickly? Would that allow someone to include it in a proprietary product and (after the short copyright term ended) deny users the freedoms that the GPL is supposed to guarantee? I think those freedoms remain important for much longer than 10 years.

> (and no changes since remember, it's a constantly rolling window)

Do you mean that the copyright term countdown would reset whenever the author makes changes to their work? (I'm not sure if this is the case today.) If so, couldn't someone simply use an earlier version in their proprietary product in order to escape GPL obligations early?

> "if you're releasing under an open source license and thus giving up your standard first, second, and part of your third period of IP rights and monopoly, you're excluded from needing to pay a license fee because you've already enable the public to make derivative works for free for decades when they wouldn't otherwise anyway."

Yes, I think this makes sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

by foresto

3/25/2026 at 10:07:50 PM

> quickie comments on HN should be taken more as mental stimulation and kickoff points for further discussion

Indeed.

Setting aside variable details like time frames and cost structures which can be debated separately, what I found interesting about your suggestion is it's a mechanism to create an escalating incentive for copyright holders to relinquish copyrights even sooner than the standard copyright period. Currently, no matter what the term length, it costs nothing to sit on a copyright until it expires - so everyone does - even if they never do anything with the copyright. And the copyright exists even if the company goes bankrupt or the copyright holder dies. Thus we end up with zombie copyrights which keep lurking in the dark for works which are almost certainly abandon-ware or orphan-ware simply because our current system defaults to one-and-done granting of "life of the inventor + 70 years" for everything.

Obviously, we should dramatically shorten the standard copyright length but no matter what we shorten it to (10, 15, 20 yrs etc) we should consider requiring some recurring renewal before expiration as a separate idea. Even if it's just paying a small processing fee and sending in simple DIY form, it sets the do-nothing-default to "auto-expire" for things the inventor doesn't care about (and may even have forgotten about). That's a net benefit to society we should evaluate separately from debates about term lengths.

I see your suggestion about automatically escalating the cost of recurring renewal as another separate layer worth considering on its own merits. My guess would be just requiring any recurring renewal would cause around half of all copyrights to auto-expire before reaching their full term - even if the renewal stayed $10. The idea of having recurring renewal costs escalate, regardless of when the escalation kicks in, or how much it escalates, is a mechanism which could achieve even more net positive societal benefits by increasing the incentive to relinquish copyrights sooner.

by mrandish

3/26/2026 at 5:05:09 AM

Only for 10+ year old versions. You'd be able to re license ancient stuff but it would be so far behind it wouldn't be all that relevant.

by Gigachad

3/25/2026 at 4:05:23 PM

How about something like IP as a tax? IE: if you make profit off of it, then it cranks up. There's plenty of music artists who's song blow up a decade or more later.

by calvinmorrison

3/25/2026 at 4:23:31 PM

I want to be super clear that I'm not proposing some finalized plan or numbers here, it'd need some real work spent hashing it all out. Mainly though I hope people will consider more the huge space of untapped approaches to balancing various benefits and costs towards a better societal outcome. And that maybe that helps a little in getting us out of some of the present seemingly intractable boxes we so often seem stuck in?

Your tax idea could certainly be another useful tool. My main immediate thought/caution would be:

>IE: if you make profit off of it, then it cranks up. There's plenty of music artists who's song blow up a decade or more later.

As we have endless examples of, "profit" and even "revenue" can be subject to a lot of manipulation/fudging given the right incentives. I also think that part of the cost I describe is objective: whether it takes off right away or takes off after a decade, as long as it's under full copyright it's imposing a cost on society the whole time. Also other stuff like risk of it getting lost/destroyed. So I do think there needs to be some counter to that in the system, sitting on something, even if it makes no money, shouldn't be free.

But the graduated approach might help with this too, and again they could be mixed and matched. It could be 1001.3^n to keep full copyright, but only 501.2^n to maintain "licenseright", 25*1.15^n for "FRANDright", and free for the remaining period of "creditright". Or whatever, play around with numbers and consider different outcomes. But feels like there's room for improvement over the present state of affairs.

by xoa

3/25/2026 at 5:44:27 PM

When old art gets a revival like that it's usually because the work is being reused (e.g. song used in an ad, Tv show, movie), something that costs time and money to license when done legally. How many artists lost their chances because navigating copyright is tedious and expensive?

by phillipseamore

3/25/2026 at 5:49:47 PM

The two biggest examples I can think of were because of a joke (Never Gonna Give You Up) and a glitch (Plastic Love).

by underlipton

3/25/2026 at 4:40:13 PM

That's how you end up with "Hollywood accounting" where movies that gross over 100M dollars still show as a "loss" for tax purposes via creative accounting methods.

by pwg

3/26/2026 at 3:13:33 PM

No, you end up with Hollywood accounting if your IRS fails at its job.

by izacus

3/25/2026 at 9:41:45 PM

An adversarial approach would also be interesting: People could open positions of "I would buy a right to use this copyright for $XYZ if it was released today"

So the copyright holder would have the option to EITHER cashout at any point (and consider the work/invested effort paid) OR counter-bid the sum of everyone to keep it.

Not sure about the implications, but it would encourage the most (economically) productive route

by davidgtl

3/25/2026 at 10:42:11 PM

I'm a big proponent of compulsory licensing, which could certainly be limited to renewals so that creative control is still granted for some amount of time.

by MrDrMcCoy

3/25/2026 at 10:39:15 PM

No, the problem with this is that a lot of IPs aren't profitable in their initial years, and this pretty strictly encourages property-holding as a business. That's exactly the wrong kind of revenue generation that copyright is supposed to be encouraging. It's empty rent-seeking.

Further, I think that the premise is flawed. Rather than being more protected by being profitable, a work should be less protected the more it has profited the owners. If you can make $50 million profit as an individual from your creative work that took 5 years to produce, then you're done. Dozens of lifetimes of wealth for 5 years of work? No, that's more than enough. You don't deserve more money for that. You have been suitably encouraged. The trouble with that idea is that "creative accounting" is too easy, so that won't really work, either.

I think it should match patent law. 20 years, and that's it. After that, if you want to keep making profit, you need to make something new. Because that's what it's supposed to do: let you make a living if you're able, and encourage you to keep working to create more.

by da_chicken

3/26/2026 at 5:34:27 AM

Yep, I've been proposing a similar system literally for decades now in online discussions like this. If you dig through Slashdot posts from 20 years ago, you might find something from me saying something similar.

It makes sense too: some things just aren't very profitable, and some are. If it's really worth it to the creator, they can pay for it. If they want to keep it locked up for 75 years, they better be prepared to pay very handsomely.

One problem I see with this system is: how does someone know if what they're trying to copy is protected by copyright or not? The government would have to maintain a public database to query. Another possible problem is the Berne convention, which harmonizes copyright across countries.

But yeah, the system we have now is terrible.

by shiroiuma

3/26/2026 at 5:54:07 AM

This could lead to a broader culture, because the most popular works would get long copyright protection terms, while the relatively unpopular ones would get short protection terms. People would be more likely to use those unpopular works and perhaps breathe new life into them.

Eg imagine if this is how the system worked right now. You could have streamers watch unpopular (modern) movies with their audience. Or a youtuber could read a book to their viewers (listeners). And it wouldn't have to be content that's 100+ years out of date.

You could also make it so that when the copyright protection first expires then a percentage of the income earned through the use of the work gets paid to the author for some number of years. Eg you're free to use the work, but you've got to pay some percentage of the revenue to the author for 10 years.

by Aerroon

3/26/2026 at 1:33:00 PM

> You could have streamers watch unpopular (modern) movies with their audience. Or a youtuber could read a book to their viewers (listeners).

Why is this something that the government should promote?

by Peritract

3/26/2026 at 5:27:24 PM

It's just an example of culture being more varied than just Disney or Marvel.

by Aerroon

3/25/2026 at 6:41:04 PM

Both creative and intriguing ideas, I like it!

by Barbing

3/25/2026 at 4:18:45 PM

At this stage I just want a coherent system. There is no way "individuals can have their accounts terminated for one song" and "AI companies can download a complete copy of everything, including pirated works, and roll it into models which can reproduce it exactly and sell it back to you" should be able to co-exist.

by pjc50

3/25/2026 at 3:40:42 PM

The reason copyright doesn't get fixed or removed is largely because the general public is worried more about other things and the big rightsholders continue their monthly payments—err, lobbying.

Though AI might change that. In the end, large corporations get what they want.

by ronsor

3/25/2026 at 3:50:55 PM

The general public also get sold on the rosy idea that copyright (and patents to a certain extent), protect the little guy, that thanks to this mechanism their work will not be stolen by opportunistic freeloaders. It also resonates with the "one day I will strike rich" mentality.

What they usually "forget" to tell you is that your IP is absolutely worthless if you don't have the resources to defend it in court, which in turns actually advantages freeloaders who either have relatively low costs to sue (patent trolls are basically an example of this) or enough money that they don't feel the pain if they lose.

The current system basically incentivizes suing over IP NOT creating it.

by thmsths

3/25/2026 at 5:16:24 PM

To add to the list of things that they "forget" to tell you, is that the real origin of copyright is fundamentally tied to censorship as well [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

Overall, IP seem to be a massive mistake.

by bit-anarchist

3/25/2026 at 8:05:11 PM

Also: almost no works make any money at all after 5 years.

They are not serving the purpose of copyright: To encourage creation.

by damnitbuilds

3/25/2026 at 9:14:28 PM

If copyright was only a decade then Sony could have waited 5 more years and made the movie of Project Hail Mary without paying one dime to Andy Weir.

I think the law is too long now, but a decade is too short to protect artists. Even a patent is 20 years.

by snowwrestler

3/30/2026 at 7:19:31 AM

Maybe that would encourage writers to actually make best use of the book medium as opposed to Andy Weir which is basically a film script with a cover on it.

by globular-toast

3/26/2026 at 10:50:28 AM

> made the movie of Project Hail Mary without paying one dime to Andy Weir.

and is there anything really wrong with that?

I personally would have liked to see fan made movies of various IPs like star wars, and harry potter, but it is impossible due to the long reach of copyright infringement.

by chii

3/25/2026 at 11:47:27 PM

probably someone else would have made the movie instead. there is time value to money. money now is better than money in 5 years

by spongebobstoes

3/25/2026 at 4:30:12 PM

> now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.

I'm not so sure they're unrelated.

The bondage of intellectual property forces very particular branches of human development to the exclusion of others. It's no surprise that restriction of thought and creativity - and most of all, music - is to be found alongside war and predation and uninspired leadership.

by jMyles

3/25/2026 at 6:04:31 PM

I think it should be for a lifetime of the original author and non-transferable. The system is already rigged very much against artists, it's amazing how many people still contribute to culture under the given conditions. I don't see any reason why someone who writes a Christmas song or a novel shouldn't have a possibility to get payments for their works until they die, for example. However, I have a lot of problems with the bizarre extensions that companies and heirs have gotten for work they haven't created on their own.

by jonathanstrange

3/26/2026 at 10:52:48 AM

> non-transferable

so you can't create works for hire than?

by chii

3/26/2026 at 1:37:02 PM

You could, you'd just license them at creation time for X years. It would stop large corporations hoarding everything.

by Peritract

3/26/2026 at 3:43:03 PM

a licensing agreement is not work for hire - work for hire means the person doing the hiring owns the copyright, not the person who did the work.

by chii

3/26/2026 at 3:55:15 PM

That's how it works now, but we're talking about changing it. That's the context of the conversation.

by Peritract

3/25/2026 at 6:38:25 PM

In a world where copyright only lasts 10 years, what happens to the musician whose song from 20 years ago is used in a movie and becomes super popular? Do they get royalties or are there no royalties involved?

I want a system that doesn't syphon money to the corporations over the individual creator and the corporations can't tell me I can't use the song.

by MattGrommes

3/25/2026 at 9:03:29 PM

No royalties, as the 20-year-old song would be in the public domain, so no one can tell anyone they can't use the song. The vast majority of songs that make a profit will do so within the first few years, with almost or actually nothing after 10 years. The copyright system should optimise for public benefit and the vast majority of works, rather than the tiny number of big successes.

by mkl

3/25/2026 at 7:01:53 PM

I'm not sure that's the correct approach. Why do you want to have free access to other people's books, movies, and songs in the first place? I have the feeling that's not the case, but what is it then?

by tgv

3/25/2026 at 3:34:59 PM

Leave it in 2, like patents. Even 3 could be tolerated. But current standard is crap.

by f1shy

3/25/2026 at 6:48:31 PM

Disagree on the decade. There are plenty of examples of great movies or other works that took longer than a decade to bring to the public. Those projects would have been completely non-viable if their content could have been stolen after creators put a decade into their development.

I think 25 or even 50 years is more defensible. But 100? Nah.

But the crushing problem today for many of us here is SOFTWARE PATENTS. These should never have been allowed in the first place; and until their scourge is abolished, everyone is at risk for having his work stolen with one.

by MoonWalk

3/26/2026 at 3:00:56 AM

The timer on copyright starts once a work is published, not when the work is first started. So works that spend a decade or more in development would be unaffected by this.

by robhlt

3/25/2026 at 9:47:56 PM

We should do a split system where its like life of artist or 25 years, whichever is longer. Seems like a good balance for the artists estate too.

by dawnerd

3/25/2026 at 10:04:26 PM

The usual way to do that is to have renewals or other periods; then things that are abandoned fall out of copyright, but things that the author is alive to protect remain in.

It's moderately hard to build a law based on what people think is "fair" mainly because fairness often has more to do with feelings (it would be fair for someone to make a Hobbit movie because the author is long dead; it would be unfair for someone to make a Potter movie because the author is alive, etc) than with an easily quantifiable rule.

I've often thought the solution is to define copyright (of things published, not trade secrets and unpublished works) as being something that can ONLY be defended as long as the work is "available" in the marketplace for "reasonable" amounts. As long as Warner Bros or whoever it is keeps selling the Lord of the Rings (extended edition) on DVD or whatever, they can j'accuse infringers of downloading it.

But ten years after it's no longer in print? No longer in copyright, either.

by bombcar

3/25/2026 at 10:44:16 PM

What about 10 years, then compulsory licensing goes into effect for any remaining duration and renewal?

by MrDrMcCoy

3/25/2026 at 3:44:59 PM

IANAL but it seems to have major implications beyond music piracy, like into the realm of ISPs and free speech in general, it seems the court (rightly) sees ISPs as a common carrier (like water pipes) and we may see more opinions of the kind that reach into the space of monopolies or duopolies in social media next.

by Covzire

3/25/2026 at 3:54:27 PM

Big tech should loose its safe harbor protection. It’s both an aggregator AND a curator. The algorithms showing you what to see is no different than a newspaper editor. Just like newspapers big tech should be liable for their “feeds” showing harmful and defamatory information

by bushbaba

3/25/2026 at 4:01:24 PM

I would be happy if congress passed a law saying a social media has no liability for anything their users post as long as the algorithm is completely open source. If we had social media like that, they'd even have APIs that let users design their own algorithm and we'd see a golden age of social media emerge from it. Twitter seems to moving in this direction but they enjoy no legal protections from being open at the moment. Blusky is already this way I believe, but without a neutral and trusted centralized control it's a bit different of an animal.

by Covzire

3/25/2026 at 4:23:31 PM

I don’t see how it would ever make sense to hold social media liable for user posted defamation.

Look at the recent Afroman defamation lawsuit and consider how YouTube is supposed to know whether that music video was defamatory or not. It took a court 3 years to reach a conclusion but you want YouTube to make that same call instantly, on millions of posts a day. What you’d get is a world where Afroman’s (non defamatory) speech basically cannot be shared on social media at all.

by elpool2

3/25/2026 at 6:50:54 PM

I think the difference should be whether they are a dumb pipe, or whether they exercise editorial control and/or promote some content over others.

If you are truly a dumb pipe, that just transmits whatever the users post, then you shouldn't be liable for what goes over your wires. Like the phone company.

As soon as you start acting as an editor: amplifying some content and downplaying (or removing) other content, re-ordering it, ranking it, and so on, then you are placing your name on the content and in a sense should share liability around it.

Companies should have to deliberately decide who they are going to be: are they just wires like the phone company, or are they a newspaper's letters-to-the-editor department? They shouldn't be able to act like one, but have the liability of the other.

by ryandrake

3/25/2026 at 10:20:47 PM

That seems unworkable because, well, I just don’t want social media to be dumb pipes. Without sites making editorial decisions every site will be full of porn and animal torture videos. The current status quo seems way better tbh.

by elpool2

3/25/2026 at 8:00:54 PM

I think for Music / Movies / Shows, sure, for Software? Probably not so simple.

by giancarlostoro

3/25/2026 at 10:08:22 PM

Some would argue software shouldn't be copyrightable at all.

And their arguments aren't entirely without merit, either.

Hard to make them on a site dedicated to selling software and its byproducts, perhaps.

by bombcar

3/26/2026 at 1:07:32 PM

Copyright is what gives licenses like the GPL teeth against people who violate it though. I would argue abandonware should be fair game. If the company in question is gone or not maintaining the software, it should be 100% considered public domain.

by giancarlostoro

3/25/2026 at 5:52:32 PM

[flagged]

by raw_anon_1111

3/26/2026 at 12:48:10 AM

The constitutionally defined purpose of copyright is:

"... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

I don't understand how "person X created this so anyone who does something similar has to pay him and his kin for all eternity" promotes progress. In fact, it does the exact opposite - at some point you can't do or say anything through any persistent media without paying legions of lawyers, trusts, and corporate entities.

by RiverCrochet

3/26/2026 at 12:51:19 AM

You could always create something on your own instead…

by raw_anon_1111

3/26/2026 at 3:08:31 PM

Incorrect. If everyone who creates something has a claim on it for eternity, eventually creating something will be impossible.

by RiverCrochet

3/26/2026 at 5:31:21 AM

Because we live in a society.

New versions of ideas should be available to all of us after a certain amount of time.

And I can equally ask why you think others should have the right to control you and stop you from imitating them.

by Dylan16807

3/26/2026 at 9:51:37 PM

If I can’t come up with a new idea, I don’t deserve to make money from someone else’s

by raw_anon_1111

3/26/2026 at 10:53:33 PM

How about personal copies?

But okay, do you apply that logic everywhere? Should restaurants be unable to make any dishes they didn't invent? Automobile manufacturers need to invent a new kind of engine and/or pay licenses based on a thousand year old gear designs?

The concept of a truly new idea is flawed anyway, every new idea is full of old ideas. Both inventions and stories.

A time period where only one person can use an idea is an unnatural state. We create this state anyway for certain benefits, but the longer any particular patent or copyright lasts the more flawed and detrimental it is to enforce it. Once an idea fully soaks through society, nobody should own it.

by Dylan16807

3/25/2026 at 3:53:22 PM

[flagged]

by mannyv

3/25/2026 at 4:00:03 PM

The current term in the US is like life +70 years, or something.

While 10 is arbitrary, I like it because it is much closer to balancing incentive for creativity vs stifling creativity.

I make software and data. It’s worth protecting. But I think the harm from copyright protection has been greater than the benefit.

Framing it as people who want reasonable copyright as anti-creator is so not cool and avoids discussion.

by prepend

3/25/2026 at 11:05:34 PM

>While 10 is arbitrary, I like it because it is much closer to balancing incentive for creativity vs stifling creativity.

You're the one avoiding discussion by just declaring this is true

by freejazz

3/25/2026 at 4:08:50 PM

can’t IP be sold to a company that is “alive” for as long as it’s financially viable.

I always wonder when copyright runs out for artist who sold their collections to companies.

by acomjean

3/25/2026 at 5:02:41 PM

> I always wonder when copyright runs out for artist who sold their collections to companies.

This question is straightforward to answer with a single web search, so if you "always wonder" try looking.

In this case it's the creator, not the owner.

by Arainach

3/26/2026 at 12:27:54 AM

what if the creator is a company? They are allowed to hold copyrights.

Though one answers is: 95/120 years.

"If the work is a joint work, the term lasts for seventy years after the last surviving author’s death. For works made for hire and anonymous or pseudonymous works, copyright protection is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter"

https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/

by acomjean

3/26/2026 at 12:38:26 AM

[dead]

by Arainach

3/25/2026 at 4:30:05 PM

What is "financially viable"? Just hoarding copyrighted materials and not distributing them in order to create artificial scarcity could meet that criteria.

by Maken

3/25/2026 at 3:56:44 PM

Why do we send X person to prison for 5 years, and not 4 years, or 6 years? Clearly the only rational choices are life sentence or no prison time.

Or, why protect it for 70 years? Why not 69 years? Why not 68 years? etc. Such a useless argument in every way.

by applfanboysbgon

3/25/2026 at 5:03:24 PM

It was originally 14 years back in 1790 when publishing anything was expensive, distribution was difficult, and worldwide distribution was nearly impossible. Today you can publish works across the globe at close to the speed of light and at very little cost. 10 years seems pretty damn reasonable.

The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new works and allowing people creative access to their own culture accomplishes that goal a whole lot better than protecting the profits of corporations for ~100 years.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 3:56:41 PM

> If you made anything that was worth protecting you might feel differently.

How do you know they didn't? Oh, because of the No True Scotsman of "no person who truly made something worth protecting can have this opinion".

As if none of us have released anything under an MIT license. Ridiculous.

by stavros

3/25/2026 at 4:26:47 PM

Copyright is an artificial monopoly set in place to guarantee that artists get a piece of the cake from distributors. The duration of this monopoly is completely arbitrary, and ideally it should be "long enough to make art creation a viable trade".

by Maken

3/25/2026 at 4:57:33 PM

ideally it should be "long enough to make art creation a viable trade"

And, IMO, 10 years is in the ballpark for that to be true. That's ~5 major pieces of art as a minimum for a popular artist to have a career (assuming their 20s through 60s) [assuming each protected piece can sustain them for a decade].

by alistairSH

3/25/2026 at 4:08:50 PM

I'd expect most people in this forum have made something "worth protecting" or even make a living doing so. Certainly it's been my career. I still think we should drastically shorten copyrights and expect more to grant it. e.g. for software, require source escrow to the copyright office and probably require source availability to purchasers, and ban things like hardware that only runs signed software. Basically the law should be GPL without redistribution, but where you could hire a programmer to fix things for you and maybe share your diff. Or just straight GPL (i.e. software should not be eligible for copyright as it's a functional thing, not a creative thing, and consumer protection law should make it mandatory to provide source and a way to load your own version for any device that has it). For other works, registration fees should cover storage of a master copy until expiration + N years so it can be released to the public. Maybe "source material" there as well wherever it makes sense. I understand that might make my career less lucrative. That's fine.

by ndriscoll

3/25/2026 at 4:15:10 PM

Whoever drafts the law has to arbitrarily choose a number, or there will be no end of litigation to settle it, and a judge will arbitrarily choose a number. OP's opinion is "not more than 10" so 9, 8 and 1 would all be fine with them, while 11 would be too long. Source: reading. Meanwhile you haven't even made clear where you stand on the issue or what point you're making or in what way "differently" OP is supposed to feel.

by rdiddly

3/25/2026 at 4:31:33 PM

> If you made anything that was worth protecting you might feel differently.

Please don't put those of us who create so-called 'intellectual property' for a living in the middle of this.

We didn't ask for government protection and we don't want it.

https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbqgG6o1n8

by jMyles

3/25/2026 at 3:59:38 PM

I think I've made plenty and I don't feel differently.

You could ask the same questions about the actual duration of copyrights as they are today. You present those rhetorical questions as if they were some argument against this proposal, but they're just things you need to think about regardless of what scheme you come up with: why this, and why not something else? It's not like "life of the author plus 70 years, or 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from creation" is any less arbitrary.

We should remember that the purpose of intellectual property laws in the US is explicitly, per the US Constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...." The purpose is not to ensure that creators can keep collecting money decades after they created their works. It may be useful to ensure that as a way to promote progress, but it's just a tool, not the goal. If progress is better promoted with a 10-minute copyright term then we should do that instead.

by wat10000

3/25/2026 at 3:55:19 PM

Because it sounds like a nice round reasonable number. Like many others in the law.

Now stop being a clown.

by izacus

3/25/2026 at 4:39:30 PM

Glad to have one less reason to incentivize ISPs to monitor every single thing we do on the internet.

by Sparkle-san

3/25/2026 at 4:53:40 PM

They are already incentivized enough by selling the data, more incentives won't change anything.

by plagiarist

3/25/2026 at 5:27:06 PM

The ruling said that they don’t have to.

Going with your point, it does not say they can’t monitor and then sell the list of pirates to Sony/etc. for some extra income.

They just didn’t like doing it for free.

by MBCook

3/25/2026 at 5:58:57 PM

Yes, but then the question becomes: which tactics does MPAA and the like will now resort to. Because we know they won't exactly say 'I guess that's it then'.

by iugtmkbdfil834

3/25/2026 at 9:47:46 PM

The MPAA has limited options given they aren’t any sort of government entity with any real enforcement power. All they can do is keep suing as they hope for a different outcome and/or try new forms of DRM.

by Forgeties79

3/26/2026 at 1:30:39 PM

the US Gov rolls over for anyone with enough money -- trump takes bribes

the MPAA has money, and they will go after the government to fix their problem

by red-iron-pine

3/25/2026 at 4:32:08 PM

Just to try and understand the decision, an analogy that’s coming to mind would be like saying a van manufacturer wouldn’t have liability if it’s used in a bank robbery. However if the manufacturer sold it with the intent for the buyer to use it for bank robbery (the manufacturer having the intent in this case, as well as the robber themselves), then they could become partially liable.

Have I got that right?

by scott_w

3/25/2026 at 5:28:53 PM

In this case, there is a safe harbor where ISPs can avoid liability by enforcing a policy against their customers that eventually cuts them off for repeated infringement. Cox stepped outside of this safe harbor by not following their own policy. But the court says that doesn't automatically make them liable.

by smallerize

3/25/2026 at 7:35:06 PM

Does this mean the entire enforcement regime is now more or less a paper tiger? It's sufficient to have a process that satisfies the letter of the law, but you can simply not follow through and enforce it.

by ok123456

3/25/2026 at 8:03:23 PM

> It's sufficient to have a process that satisfies the letter of the law

No.

Let's take an example of 401ks.

Any company that has a 401k has to pass non-discrimination testing to ensure their plan doesn't favor highly compensated employees over non-highly compensated employees. This is done through Actual Deferral Percentage and Actual Contribution Percentage tests. Just doing these tests can be very costly.

If you don't want to do these tests, then you can follow a 'safe harbor' action where the company automatically contributes x% for everyone. If the plan executes the 'safe harbor' action, then they automatically pass the two tests above.

However, if they don't follow through that plan they may still not have violated the nondiscrimination policies if they end up passing those two tests.

So to bring it back to the circumstance here, because Cox was not following their own processes which would have afforded them safe harbor they do not get the benefit of being automatically protected from the action. Then the court goes to see if Cox was sufficiently involved in the violating actions in order to be liable, and the court found that Cox was not.

So going back to the line...: > It's sufficient to have a process that satisfies the letter of the law, but you can simply not follow through and enforce it.

Not at all. Because it was not enforced, Cox lost the safe harbor protections and had to defend themselves.

by forgotaccount3

3/26/2026 at 1:35:36 PM

With 401ks and financial instruments in general, it's cut-and-dry: there's either a payment, or there isn't, and there's a whole accountancy industry that supports that.

With DMCA claims, it's an adversarial accusation with inherent unreliability built into the collection mechanism, usually submitted by third parties. The process doesn't lend itself to the same kind of auditability and accountability as securities and investments.

by ok123456

3/25/2026 at 5:22:57 PM

MGM vs Grokster is a good decision to read to understand the boundaries of contributory infringement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,....

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/545/913/

by pavon

3/25/2026 at 8:33:26 PM

An example closer to home is those file sharing sites that allow you to pay to "download faster" which skirt very close to the line, if not go over it.

But Grokster et al openly advertised that you could get all music "for free".

Where the gray area is would be something that arguably can ONLY be used for piracy (an example of what this would be is hard to imagine, but maybe a device that can ONLY duplicate encrypted blurays and cannot do it for non-encrypted ones - yes I know there are arguments even here via fair use/backup/personal copy) and/or something that is substantially advertised as for piracy - something that nobody would have a reason to buy unless they were pirating, perhaps - something where free/open source similar software exists but can't be used to pirate?

by bombcar

3/26/2026 at 8:41:12 AM

> An example closer to home is those file sharing sites that allow you to pay to "download faster" which skirt very close to the line, if not go over it.

I know some file sharing sites do ip logging so if DMCA strikes happen, they can simply ban the ip too.

Is there anything tangetially important to these file sharing sites too after this decision by Supreme Court?

I can imagine that as long as they operate legal things as well and dont do things under the intention of just being used for piracy (from their sides but we all know the reality)

Then, they don't have to do anything other than just accepting the DMCA notice.

There are definitely server providers who are more privacy oriented while being affordable who only get involved not even with DMCA but rather some court ruling within their specific country which can be permissive.

So is it possible for now for a file sharing provider to say that we follow the DMCA but only if you can get it written from a local judge that we will remove these files for the purposes of Privacy for our end users?

by Imustaskforhelp

3/25/2026 at 6:59:08 PM

Yes, as much as I understand it. You have to either make a van that's specifically tailored to performing bank robberies (a door-smashing attachment at the front, a pulley to quickly get the safe box inside, etc), or at least advertise it as such ("Will get you from the robbery site faster than police can react!"). Otherwise, it's just a van. Owning a van, or selling a van, is not illegal because it could also be used to break law. (One's hands can be used to break law, but this does not lead to a liability for merely possessing hands.)

by nine_k

3/25/2026 at 4:35:26 PM

That's my understanding. Basic carrier vs service stuff. What I wonder is how this might impact gun manufacturers.

by achandlerwhite

3/25/2026 at 4:46:38 PM

There already is a specific law shielding gun manufacturers from liability from simple sales, which Democrat heavy states and locales do a lot of work to test the edges of and chip away at: the PLCAA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_... which was passed in 2005 in light of mendacious lawsuits taking up a notable amount of courts' time.

by vetrom

3/25/2026 at 4:55:36 PM

Yeah. The courts are inconsistent here. If they want to hold service providers responsible, they also must make arms producer responsible, and politicians too.

by shevy-java

3/25/2026 at 7:56:46 PM

Courts are not inconsistent, they are following the law. Like most cases decided by SCOTUS, they are deciding on the rules set by Congress and courts have ruled time and time again, that Constitution gives Congress almost sole jurisdiction for determining how Copyright law functions.

For copyright law, Congress does not expressly allow secondary liability for third parties FOR COPYRIGHT unless the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement. In this case, Cox was not cutting off copyright infringers BUT since their service could be used by same infringers for valid use, they didn't have to.

For arms producer, Congress has exempted them for liability and courts have ruled, yep, Congress gets to make the rules here.

Congress could overturn both rulings by changing the law.

This is what we want. Congress makes the rules, courts interpret but don't make new rules.

by stackskipton

3/25/2026 at 5:30:07 PM

Well this is a copyright case and guns aren’t. Couldn’t that be a big reason for the difference?

by MBCook

3/25/2026 at 4:37:38 PM

[flagged]

by joering2

3/25/2026 at 5:26:11 PM

Because intent isn't something that you can acquire from the actions of third parties

Second, the VAST majority of guns in the US sit in gun safes and closets and never shoot anyone.

Finally, shooting someone is not necessarily an illegal action -- gun manufacturers market their products for self defense or sporting reasons -- I have never seen one market their products for use in criminal acts.

by kube-system

3/25/2026 at 6:33:15 PM

Well, I have never seen Cox advertising their internet cable as a way to download pirated movies, but here we are.

by joering2

3/25/2026 at 9:33:58 PM

Yes, exactly. As the ruling states:

> Cox neither induced its users’ infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement; accordingly, Cox is not contributorily liable for the infringement of Sony’s copyrights

by kube-system

3/25/2026 at 4:48:35 PM

There are around ~500 millions guns in the US according to a quick Google.

There's a lot of crime in the US, but I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime.

Also you can buy a gun and just shoot it at a range.

by ApolloFortyNine

3/25/2026 at 4:56:49 PM

> I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime.

Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable? He produced the gun. The gun is the tool to cause harm, injury, potentially death. If service providers are held responsible for users, arms producers must also be held accountable. Financially too.

by shevy-java

3/25/2026 at 5:12:13 PM

>> Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable?

Notably by criminals who have never, and will never abide by the copious amounts of federal and state laws that currently regulate how people are able to use guns. If that is the case, how does holding manufacturers responsible for something completely out of their control make sense?

Its like saying car manufacturers should be responsible for drunk drivers who kill others in collisions. Because they should've known their cars would be used by someone to do something dangerous and against the law?

by burningChrome

3/25/2026 at 5:28:28 PM

The gun companies have incentive to sell as many guns as they can, to the consumerist base of gun hobbyists.

There are 500M guns in the US because it's a hobby based on buying and collecting.

Due to the amount of guns in circulation, it is common for guns to be stolen.

Therefore, there are more "illegal" guns in circulation due to the consumerist nature of gun owners, and the companies making money on selling these guns.

Without a large amount of guns in circulation, there would not be a similarly large amount of illegal guns in circulation, as they almost all came from a factory somewhere.

I like guns but I am so tired of people acting like the 2nd amendment insists it's their right to treat firearms like goddamn funkopops.

In states with legal marijuana, we set limits on the number of plants one can keep on their property, yet there is no limit to how many firearms one can poorly store for a slightly competent criminal to come collect under their nose. No liability for poorly storing them either unless it's in the immediate vicinity of a toddler.

by MSFT_Edging

3/26/2026 at 12:01:42 AM

I dont think the constitution has an amendement that guarantees freedom of Marijuana ownership. I think that's the main difference. This is akin to saying that you need a license to drive to why not be required to have an ID to walk around on the streets. The difference is rather simple, one is protected by the constitution and the other isn't.

Also I don't think the consumerist gun ownes commit a lot of crimes with their guns. Unless they are a demographic that is known to be prone to lose or get their guns stolen super often, I don't see how they cause any real issue in term of gun violence. I agree that it is really cringe to see, but they are actually usually responsible in terms of ownership, storage, etc.

by mardifoufs

3/25/2026 at 9:15:45 PM

[dead]

by burningChrome

3/25/2026 at 5:36:07 PM

You are oversimplifying the situation beyond the entire point of this ruling --

Cox internet is sometimes used to commit copyright infringement, but it is designed and marketed for legal purposes. Guns are also sometimes used for illegal purposes, but they are designed and marketed for legal purposes.

by kube-system

3/25/2026 at 5:04:53 PM

Just curious, do you feel the same way about knife manufacturers? Or automotive makers?

by freedomben

3/25/2026 at 5:19:43 PM

By that logic Toyota should be liable if someone uses a Tacoma to ram a crowd.

by JCTheDenthog

3/25/2026 at 5:44:41 PM

Strawman argument. Inflicting harm does not automatically equal a crime. And you're also disregarding the use of guns as a deterrent.

by dwedge

3/25/2026 at 4:46:35 PM

Even the lowest estimates (the National Crime Victimization Survey) estimates annual defensive gun uses in the US at 60-80k per year. Highest estimates are at around 2 million.

But even then, most usage is at ranges, and far outstrips crime usage.

by JCTheDenthog

3/25/2026 at 6:37:24 PM

I don't think it matters in the light of this ruling. Cox could have argued that 99.9% of their data packets are Netflix and downloads of free Linux ISOs, yet neither court nor the ruling cares.

by joering2

3/25/2026 at 4:49:45 PM

Statistically speaking, most guns are not used for crime, and even among uses, crime is probably small compared to military or even hunting etc.

by clickety_clack

3/25/2026 at 4:52:49 PM

That's not at all what this ruling says?

To win, Cox did not need to prove that they sold their product without intent to infringe. To win, the plaintiff would have had to prove that Cox had intent. The difference in burden of proof is in practice massive.

by Tuna-Fish

3/25/2026 at 5:41:50 PM

This is an instance of begging the question "if the overwhelming amount of used guns are used to accompany crime then how can you argue otherwise".

But there's no substance to your premise. 400 million owned guns, 50,000 deaths a year, it's a long way from the overwhelming majority.

by dwedge

3/25/2026 at 6:38:14 PM

Absolutely. I would also agree that 99% of data delivered by Cox is not pirated movies.

by joering2

3/25/2026 at 4:43:49 PM

> where overwhelming amount of USED guns are used to accompany crime

I do not think this holds up to a factual analysis if you look at any cross section of defensive gun use reports. I don't think that parts actually relevant here though. If you were to use a similar standard as the USSC court applies here: Impressions don't matter to qualify for inducement. The action must be actively invited.

by vetrom

3/25/2026 at 4:49:21 PM

Guns stolen = crime. Guns purchased = self defense.

by creantum

3/25/2026 at 4:40:45 PM

it would help if all cases of self defense were cataloged. Right now it only hits the stats if a crime is not averted.

by dionian

3/25/2026 at 4:50:56 PM

So, merely selling 'with intent' for the van to be used in a robbery I don't think meets the bar as the opinion is written. In particular, I read "...which can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement;"

In that vein, merely selling a tool even if a predominant use or intention of that tool is infringement, the infringement must be actively induced or invited by the seller. This is also affirmed in detail in the USSC opinion: "The Court has repeatedly made clear—see Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, 222 U. S. 55, Sony, and Grokster—that mere knowledge that a service will be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the required intent to infringe."

This is the primary part of the opinion, the first 7 of 27 pages. I'm still reading the rest and will update when finished. (Concurring Opinion and Dissents I believe)

===

The meat of the opinion has some interesting elements as well:

* "Internet service providers, such as Cox, have limited knowledge about how their Internet services are used and who uses them. They do know which IP address corresponds to which subscriber’s account, but they cannot distinguish one individual user from another...However, because online infringement is so widespread, pursuing each individual infringer does little to stem the tide.": mere IP logs are not enough to establish liability, perhaps. More importantly, it is opined that individual fishing expeditions dont actually serve the end of eliminating infringement. This does not absolve individual liability, but it becomes important later.

* "Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate Internet service to infringing accounts would expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedents ... The Fourth Circuit’s holding thus went beyond the two forms of liability recognized in Grokster and Sony. It also conflicted with this Court’s repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest only on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it.": This points to another case where Circuit and District courts have been ignoring the instruction of higher courts, in this case, inventing new liabilities where none existed. This doesn't go so far as to repudiate entirely the idea of fishing expeditions having teeth, but it places a clear guardrail around expanding liability without laws establishing such.

===

The Sotomayor concurrence on judgment states that the Justice does not believe the methods used by the majority opinion are correct, but still agrees with the judgement because of insufficient information presented by Sony. I think the analysis gone into in this section is flawed, but it is also not precedential since it is not the Order part of the opinion. I am also out of time to poke at that part for the moment. It does relate this case to the closest recent big case on secondary liability though, that of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, so its worth reading even if the justifying analysis I think does not fit.

The big difference I guess is whether you think negative jurisdiction (limiting what the government can do) vs positive jurisdiction (further enabling the government) is more important, but considering HN and the exhortations against divisive commentary, I'd rather not dive into the weeds arguing that part here.

by vetrom

3/25/2026 at 9:09:45 PM

If you run an add saying "This van can outrun the cops" you're in trouble. Selling a van to a known bank-robber is fine though.

by aidenn0

3/25/2026 at 10:19:53 PM

Yes, I think so. Another analogy is firearms. They can be used to commit or facilitate crimes, yet nobody is suing gun manufacturers.

by drnick1

3/26/2026 at 5:28:13 PM

Federal law says you can't. The PLCAA passed in 2005.

by razakel

3/25/2026 at 7:09:41 PM

I think a better analogy would be crack pipes sold in minimarts in a box that says "for tobacco use only". Crackheads estate sues the pipe mfr says you knew people were using it for crack and are proximately liable for facilitating the drug use.

by gosub100

3/25/2026 at 7:30:33 PM

I watched a drug addict lovingly turn a plain lightbulb into a meth pipe.

by themafia

3/25/2026 at 8:30:16 PM

Sure, and aluminum foil can be used to smoke heroin. But they have primary obvious uses. That's the difference, vs knowing 99% of customers are going to use it for something nefarious. Even better example would be whippets or NOs meant for culinary or automotive use, but also usable for teens getting high. If manufacturers are aware and turn a blind eye, they can become liable.

by gosub100

3/25/2026 at 7:21:08 PM

..and any delivery, distributors, importers, and shippers should be held liable, also.

by Ylpertnodi

3/25/2026 at 7:28:33 PM

The problem is these companies are typically natural monopolies. So it's not as if I choose this provider because they were lax in their copyright enforcement. I'd literally have to sell my house and move to accomplish this.

by themafia

3/25/2026 at 3:19:26 PM

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-171_bq7d.pdf

by Mindless2112

3/25/2026 at 3:12:57 PM

9-0 against the record labels. This effectively ends a long running strategy of trying to milk ISPs for people torrenting without a VPN. At the same time it likely puts things like the *Arr stack at more risk given their more tailored nature.

by ls612

3/25/2026 at 3:40:28 PM

> 9-0 against the record labels.

Love to see it. I'm still mad about the Sony rootkit[0] and the people sued for absurd amounts over downloading a few MP3s back in the 00's.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

by akersten

3/25/2026 at 4:50:49 PM

Ironically Sony wanted those artists online for streaming, and in those days the only way labels had to transport the music to distribution services was sending the CDs. So the CDs landed on my desk because they'd been rejected by the data ingestion teams. I had some more[0] stern words with a very apologetic man from Sony that day.

[0] they were constantly sending CDs that were fucked-up in totally new ways every time

by qingcharles

3/25/2026 at 3:44:04 PM

I still haven't bought a Sony labelled product since... though I may or may not have consumed Sony content. They've definitely lost more than they gained.

by tracker1

3/25/2026 at 3:49:26 PM

> They've definitely lost more than they gained.

That's a pretty good sized ego you got yourself there. The number of people that cared about the rootkit in the general populace was insignificant to Sony. Only tech nerds like us even knew about the rootkit or how insane it was to use. Unless you were a huge flagship purchaser of Sony's latest/greatest each year, they don't even notice you when you buy a TV or any other item.

People barely remember the studio getting hacked and releasing a film

by dylan604

3/26/2026 at 12:46:38 AM

They faced multiple lawsuits and had to do product recalls, so clearly they lost something. What exactly did they gain? IIRC you could avoid it by just turning off autoplay in Windows (which any sane person already did, or you could hold shift I think), and they were otherwise valid audio CDs (otherwise they wouldn't work in players), so it did exactly nothing to stop the CDs from being ripped and shared. And back then everyone knew about p2p so it really only took one person ripping it for it to spread. So even ignoring the lawsuits, even one person boycotting them probably makes it a net loss. Actually the development costs probably made it a loss.

by ndriscoll

3/25/2026 at 4:03:15 PM

> Lost more than they gained (from me, implied).

Maybe, just maybe assume the best in people instead of jumping to the worst interpretations you can.

by tracker1

3/25/2026 at 10:29:19 PM

Not sure how interpreted what I said as anything other than the implied you. No matter how much money you did or no longer do spend with Sony is not anything they'd notice. The caveat being you were a flagship purchaser from them which I doubt was the case.

by dylan604

3/26/2026 at 5:24:16 PM

You assumed it was a point of ego, even said as much.

I don't have to buy shit from Sony if I don't want to, and you can't make me.

They definitely lost more on potential hardware sales the past few decades than I would have spent on content... even if it's not enough for them to notice.

by tracker1

3/25/2026 at 4:57:24 PM

I too have never bought anything from Sony since then. Or any DRM at all, in fact.

by azalemeth

3/25/2026 at 3:48:04 PM

I still boycott Sony over this. Made me a PC gamer, too.

by m-s-y

3/25/2026 at 4:30:24 PM

The media industry has already decided that it should be allowed to turn copyright enforcement into a revenue stream and I doubt they're going to stop their extortion racket now.

This ruling could mean that they'll increase their efforts targeting individuals with threatening letters demanding that they admit wrongdoing and settle for a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars at a time or else get sued in court and be forced to pay a lawyer tens of thousands to defend their innocence. It could mean they actually take more individuals to court instead of dropping the case every time they threaten somebody with enough money to hire a lawyer to defend them at trial.

The media industry is also pushing for more control in other ways as well like blank media style taxes which would let them rake in a steady stream of cash without needing to make make specific accusations. They also still want to be able to force ISPs to instantly blacklist any IPs they accuse of streaming copyrighted content. They've got this power in many countries already and innocent users have already been screwed over by it. They may decide to focus their efforts on getting this pushed through in the US now.

I doubt this ruling will lead to the kinds of broad copyright reforms we need, but it's long past time the courts started pushing back on the insane power grabs of the RIAA/MPA. No other industry could get away with demanding what they have.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 4:21:06 PM

A personal anecdote:

I had several roommates, and we each were responsible for a utility. I was responsible for internet, and Cox was our provider.

I received multiple e-mails from Cox about copyright infringement. I can't recall them, but I remember it being serious enough for me to tell people to stop.

Thinking back, I feel like Cox's position is right and fair; let users know they're being observed by copyright holders, and inform the user that they could be compelled to provide their identity to complainants.

But ultimately, the responsibility to "stop" the supposed infringement is on the holder, not Cox.

by oneneptune

3/26/2026 at 7:08:35 AM

The *Arr point is the more interesting legal exposure. Cox wins because it's a neutral common carrier with no specific knowledge of which users are infringing. The Grokster contributory infringement standard is different — it asks whether the primary purpose of the tool is to facilitate infringement, based on things like marketing language, default configurations, and feature design decisions.

Radarr and Sonarr have default configs that integrate with known-piracy indexers out of the box. The marketing and documentation is explicit about what the tools are for. That's a harder argument to make as "neutral general-purpose software" than a Betamax-style defense.

The practical risk is probably low as long as development stays distributed across jurisdictions with no US-based entity to name as a defendant. But the Cox ruling doesn't extend the legal protection to application-layer tooling that's designed around a specific use case. If anything, this ruling clarifies that the legal liability isn't with the ISP, which shifts the targeting pressure down the stack toward tools that are less clearly protected.

by AbanoubRodolf

3/25/2026 at 3:27:50 PM

And a slapdown to the lower courts being reversed.

by pfdietz

3/25/2026 at 3:35:04 PM

> At the same time it likely puts things like the *Arr stack at more risk given their more tailored nature.

Well, those would be in the same position now that they previously were I think.

by tbrownaw

3/25/2026 at 7:30:52 PM

What does *Arr stack mean, please?

by saaaaaam

3/25/2026 at 7:37:31 PM

Sonarr et al.

by a_vanderbilt

3/25/2026 at 7:45:50 PM

Ah, interesting. This is not something I’m at all familiar with. Lots to read!

by saaaaaam

3/25/2026 at 6:21:44 PM

> Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate Internet service to infringing accounts

Imagine giving the power to rightsholders to terminate anyone's internet service with e.g, a DMCA takedown. I'm sure that won't be abused at all, and is a very necessary step to protecting "artists"

by maxwg

3/25/2026 at 5:13:43 PM

Funnily enough the only time I ever got in trouble for torrenting anything was when Cox was my ISP circa 2009. I'd been torrenting some PSP game and my connection went down. When I called the helpline they explained what happened and said they'd restore access once I confirmed I'd deleted the downloaded file.

by rimunroe

3/25/2026 at 9:49:34 PM

Lol. Did they force you to pinky swear that you'd deleted it?

by RustyRoss

3/25/2026 at 10:14:03 PM

In my experience they're very careful about what you say so that the recording allows them to say you did what was needed.

This is assuming you didn't answer for "your little brother", etc.

by bombcar

3/26/2026 at 1:31:24 AM

They waited on the line until I said I'd deleted it and then immediately reactivated my connection.

by rimunroe

3/25/2026 at 6:04:28 PM

This is huge. Sony is trying to make Cox into law enforcement to do their biddings. The Supreme Court struck that down.

by ww520

3/25/2026 at 4:20:01 PM

> They said that Cox had ignored bad actors, helping 60,000 users distribute more than 10,000 copyrighted songs for free

This is such a tiny number for a company which provides internet to over 6 million homes. I was expecting it to be in millions or at least hundreds of thousands.

by busymom0

3/26/2026 at 3:11:05 AM

When AI trainers are making a complete mockery of copyright law I have trouble caring about piracy in general.

by Pxtl

3/26/2026 at 2:21:34 PM

Right, because apparently you can just train an AI on the downloaded data and then you're apparently fine to pirate anything you want.

by mrweasel

3/25/2026 at 3:57:54 PM

Without the login wall: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

by Kye

3/25/2026 at 3:49:56 PM

So... does that mean we don't have to care about takedown notices anymore?

Like, the only reason to comply with such an onerous and censorious takedown regime was specifically to disclaim contributory copyright liability that SCOTUS just unanimously decided to erase. Is it such that as long as people aren't stupid and don't market their services as an infringement facilitator, which most don't, that they don't have to honor 512 takedown notices now? Conversely, services dumb enough to actually market themselves as infringement tools probably can't get rid of their liability by the 512 safe harbor. So there's no reason to actually honor a DMCA takedown request anymore.

by kmeisthax

3/25/2026 at 5:20:07 PM

ISPs still need to comply with the DMCA. In their decision the court did weigh the fact that "Cox repeatedly discouraged copyright infringement by sending warnings, suspending services, and terminating accounts." so I would expect that processing DMCA notices and even repeat offender terminations will continue to be a part of an ISP's enforcement policy.

That said, I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that a customer should only be terminated as a last step and only after the ISP has been made aware that their customer is actually a repeat offender. Getting a large number of unproven accusations should not be enough.

by autoexec

3/25/2026 at 4:03:43 PM

It seems like you would still have to remove the infringing content, but no need to disconnect or ban the user who shared it.

But if you’re a pure ISP and not hosting content on your own servers, then I guess, yeah DMCA doesn’t really apply to you?

by elpool2

3/25/2026 at 4:32:36 PM

This was what GFiber appeared to be doing until it sold out to private equity. I got about 60 DMCA notice emails about torrents that never reached seeding state. About 25% of them were false accusations with wrong titles unrelated to activity by anyone on my network.

by burnt-resistor

3/25/2026 at 6:21:16 PM

Actually, it looks like there is something in the law that only provides DMCA safe harbor to providers that have a policy of terminating accounts of repeat infringers. I'm still not sure if an ISP would even need that safe harbor though.

by elpool2

3/25/2026 at 9:24:34 PM

Lower circuit court said they did, Supreme Court overturned that.

by aidenn0

3/25/2026 at 10:47:50 PM

I don’t think so. They need to have the policy of terminating accounts and actually terminate a subset of them. They just can’t be held liable for not terminating all of them.

by kccqzy

3/26/2026 at 5:08:27 AM

From the decision:

> The Fourth Circuit’s holding went beyond the two forms of liability recognized in Grokster and Sony by holding that “supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe copyrights is . . . sufficient for contributory infringement.” 93 F. 4th 222, 236. This holding went beyond the two bases for contributory liability recognized in the Court’s precedent and conflicted with the Court’s repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest only on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it. Pp. 9–10.

> (c) Sony argues that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor—under which Internet service providers cannot be secondarily liable for certain forms of copyright infringement if they have implemented “a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders” who “are repeated infringers,” 17 U. S. C. §512(i)(1)(A)—would have no effect if Internet service providers are not liable for providing Internet service to known infringers. The DMCA does not expressly impose liability for Internet service providers who serve known infringers; it merely creates new defenses from liability for such providers. The DMCA itself made clear that failure to comply with the safe-harbor rules “shall not bear adversely upon . . . a defense by the service provider,” as here, “that the service provider’s conduct is not infringing.” §512(l). P. 10.

by aidenn0

3/25/2026 at 4:03:31 PM

This is about moving bits through the pipes and not the resources that those pipes are moving.

by intrasight

3/25/2026 at 7:05:48 PM

Ok while superficially great news but the supreme cynic in me is starting to think: what if the RIAA et al go to ISPs and saying they will pay them to continue monitoring this stuff and if they bring them to court, sue them and win they will give them a cut of the winnings? Would something like this even be financially feasible i.e. a profit motive inserted somewhere into the equation that ISPs would continue monitoring torrent activity?

by JasserInicide

3/25/2026 at 7:38:57 PM

> Would something like this even be financially feasible

No.

The entire reason they went after Cox is because cox has deep pockets and there was a possibility that Cox would just settle and work with them rather than fighting this all the way to the supreme court.

The problem sony has is the maximum money they can claim from an individual is just way less than what they can get from a business. Almost certainly enough to justify the legal fees.

by cogman10

3/25/2026 at 8:25:02 PM

> what if the RIAA et al go to ISPs and saying they will pay them to continue monitoring this stuff and if they bring them to court, sue them and win they will give them a cut of the winnings?

This is not a profitable business for anyone but low-level scumbags who are also lawyers (so they do not have to pay for lawyers.)

Related, the music industry loses not a dime to piracy. If all piracy stopped tomorrow, they wouldn't likely make an additional cent. Which means that all money they spend to fight piracy is a loss - which is why they tried to make examples out of people and publicize it i.e. if we will go after this poor single mom, we will certainly go after you. But they would not go after you, because they're not going to spend that kind of money.

Which is the reason for going after ISPs and search engines, to make it their responsibility. Meaning that they would have to pay for the monitoring, they would be cutting off people's internet (which is almost scarier than a copyright violation suit in the age of monopoly and blacklists.) The RIAA could just sit back and spend nothing, just send lists of IPs to ISPs to be cut off, and watch piracy disappear. With the shield of a SCOTUS judgement, ISPs could cut off internet as quickly as youtube bans for DMCA, with no consequences.

The situation now is that they can go after individuals, but nobody is obligated to help. It's all on their dime.

by pessimizer

3/25/2026 at 8:01:19 PM

[dead]

by awright96

3/26/2026 at 9:18:26 AM

I think if the courts would have ruled differently then arms producers would have to be held accountable and liable too, at all times. After all they contributed to a problem, which would be comparable to the court case here if one follows the "logic" presented by Sony.

by shevy-java

3/25/2026 at 5:26:45 PM

I have to pay property tax forever for a house I supposedly own. If I dont pay that, the government sues and takes my house. Basically I never actually own my house.

(Of course, we have "Evil Communist China" where there is no property tax, and people own their homes and can live there. Id argue they're more free than we are.)

But copyrights and patents and trademarks? There's no tax on those "properties". And gee, companies are the ones to likely own these properties, not individuals.

by nekusar

3/25/2026 at 9:33:05 PM

First of all, I'm a Georgist, so I think you should be allowed to own your house, but rent the land indefinitely (and freely transfer your interest in renting the land).

I'd like to see how free someone in China feels if they put up a Winnie The Pooh yard-sign (which I can do freely in the US, despite Disney owning the copyright for the likeness that I would use).

by aidenn0

3/25/2026 at 6:00:24 PM

What? You pay property tax because local services schools, streets, police and fire fighters need to be funded. Having a property in the area is a pretty great proxy for using some of these services, hence the property tax.

by megaman821

3/25/2026 at 6:17:27 PM

I was expecting that as a response.

There is no reason why tax has to be done as property tax. Property tax demeans actual ownership of a place for us to live. (And why the hell do corporations get away with no tax on intellectual property, or even pay on profits, whereas we humans pay on revenue and property?)

Worse yet, property taxes also enshrine the idea that the community's schools in poor areas deserve poor education. Do children in poor areas deserve poor education? Cause that's how you end up with "great and slum schools".

And the police in my area? Its sheriffs. And meh. I dont want them to keep getting military playthings.

Street? That's what gas tax and EV tax is for. And those built in with gas tax funds per gallon, aka use tax. Or vehicle registration tax.

Fire fighters? We have volunteer fire fighters.

I'm seeing a whole lot of tax and tax and tax, and shit for return on this forced investment. And property tax HAS had people end up homeless. 1 family homeless due to property tax is 1 too many.

by nekusar

3/25/2026 at 9:24:52 PM

Volunteer firefighters, public schools, and police/sheriffs still need equipment and facilities. Whether you call it property tax or "public services" tax, it amounts to the same thing. The community needs a way to fund the shared community services, and there has to be some sort of metric that determines how much each citizen contributes to the fund.

by mmahd7456

3/26/2026 at 1:45:47 PM

Do children deserve worse education and schools because the property taxes are lower?

by nekusar

3/26/2026 at 2:53:26 PM

The community does, but the corporations have made not contributing back to their communities an international sport. There's an incredibly strong argument to be made that property taxes (and frankly, ALL taxes) are much higher than they should be because of the repeated tax breaks/loopholes/backroom deals that get them out of paying their fair share. So who pays for that? The rest of us.

by taormina

3/25/2026 at 11:23:09 PM

In “evil communist China” people don’t own the land on which their homes are built. The government owns all land and a person only purchases usage rights for this land that last a certain number of years together with the ownership right of the improvements. This is self evident if you just take a look at the title documentation.

by kccqzy

3/25/2026 at 5:30:18 PM

If sony equipment was used in facilitating the copyright violation, would that make Sony liable?

by nashashmi

3/25/2026 at 6:03:20 PM

That was already decided in an old case about Betamax recorders, quoted on the front page of the linked article.

by Jolter

3/25/2026 at 9:00:30 PM

Per this ruling, only if Sony had intent to facilitate copyright violation by making the equipment.

by SAI_Peregrinus

3/25/2026 at 4:45:39 PM

I wonder what effect this will have on file sharing services like Megaupload?

by bickfordb

3/25/2026 at 5:11:04 PM

In terms of legality Megaupload messed up by directly participating in copyright infringement. They paid people to upload copyrighted movies. Cox doesn't reward people for copyright infringement. The lawsuit against them argued they failed to take enough precautions (for example cutting off subscribers upon receiving an accusation from a third party) and that should make them liable.

In practice Megaupload is not an established company. Other consumer file storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud are trillion dollar companies with deep legal benches and lobbying muscle. YouTube seeded the service with pirated content and Google helped fight off a copyright lawsuit by finding evidence that one rights holder uploaded their own video and then claimed infringement.

by supertrope

3/25/2026 at 7:45:04 PM

If anyone wonders, that's a good result. Sony was in the wrong here.

by shmerl

3/25/2026 at 6:46:08 PM

I wonder if OpenAI, et.al were eagerly awaiting this verdict because once an ISP is liable...well I'm sure you can extrapolate from there.

by doomboiardee

3/25/2026 at 9:11:21 PM

There are important factual differences compared to the challenges against OpenAI, but I think yes this decision does ultimately offer them some new legal protection against whatever customers decide to do with their tools.

by elicash

3/26/2026 at 2:11:59 PM

That's a good point too and one I wasn't even trying to make. I was thinking more in terms of how the big LLM players trained their models using torrents etc.

by doomboiardee

3/26/2026 at 3:54:44 PM

Ah, yes, I get what you meant now, makes sense.

by elicash

3/25/2026 at 3:54:46 PM

It’s interesting to see how as soon as intellectual property theft starts to be critical for powerful interests the legal system magically gets more lenient about copyright enforcement.

The balance between public good and protecting IP ownership of the creatives (which is, paradoxically, also part of the public good) has to be struck and enforced consistently.

by strogonoff

3/25/2026 at 4:12:35 PM

It's interesting to see how people look for powerful interests to explain simple and correct supreme court decisions.

by amadeuspagel

3/26/2026 at 3:41:47 PM

There’s an undeniable pattern, though.

by strogonoff

3/26/2026 at 2:17:48 AM

Not really if you look at the prior context. It’s ruling after ruling in the favor of powerful interests (aka rights holders) when it comes to copyright enforcement. A simple correct ruling feels like a miracle.

by foltik

3/25/2026 at 3:56:42 PM

How is IP “theft” more important now than 20 years ago?

by prepend

3/25/2026 at 4:00:02 PM

AI training

by VanTheBrand

3/25/2026 at 4:01:57 PM

AI training might be copyright infringement. But there’s no cases or laws to establish that.

I don’t think this case or anything else has been affected by AI training on copyrighted material, if it is deemed infringing.

by prepend

3/25/2026 at 4:08:42 PM

It's been demonstrated that some companies, even F10 ones, have been using pirated content to train their AI.

by mywittyname

3/25/2026 at 8:28:07 PM

Yes, but not demonstrated that that training is illegal.

by prepend

3/26/2026 at 2:20:15 PM

why is "training" consumption more legal than "recreational" consumption?

stealing bread to feed the birds vs stealing bread to feed your mom -- both are still stealing

by red-iron-pine

3/26/2026 at 4:24:02 PM

IANAL but my understanding it isn’t about consumption but about distribution and creating derived works. Viewing copyright material isnt illegal, distributing unlicensed copies is. EG, I can loan you a book I bought, or I can loan you a book I stole and you aren’t doing anything illegal in either case.

Stealing bread doesnt matter because stealing physical things deprives the owner of their thing. IP infringement isn’t theft in the legal or moral aspect.

by prepend

3/26/2026 at 3:43:58 PM

Arguably, it’s worse, because it is commercial use at scale. It’s more akin to public redistribution than private consumption.

by strogonoff

3/25/2026 at 4:15:38 PM

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...

They all seem to be using pirated books. Probably slightly better than just web stuff as it is presumably edited.

The authors case was thrown out on narrow reasoning. But companies now live by different rules so I suspect they won’t be held to account. Even Disney/nintendo are unlikely to stop this…

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/judge-tosses-authors-ai-tr...

by acomjean

3/25/2026 at 4:09:41 PM

What?

Anthropic ($1.5B+ Settlement): In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit over using roughly 500,000 copyrighted books from "shadow libraries" to train their Claude LLMs.

by esseph

3/26/2026 at 11:39:40 AM

> > AI training might be copyright infringement. But there’s no cases or laws to establish that.

> In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit over using roughly 500,000 copyrighted books from "shadow libraries" to train their Claude LLMs.

Yes, but not because they were training LLMs with it. The judge in the case found specifically that training the LLMs on the copyrighted material was not copyright infringement; the only copyright infringement Anthropic had committed was acquiring the material itself. In other words, if they had legally bought all of the books they used, they would have been able to train their LLMs on them with no recourse from rights holders.

by aaronmdjones

3/25/2026 at 3:59:50 PM

Isn’t this decision in exact opposition to the point you’re trying to make?

by Permit

3/25/2026 at 3:36:36 PM

Rare good decision from SCOTUS.

by selectively

3/25/2026 at 4:02:47 PM

[flagged]

by baggy_trough

3/26/2026 at 2:54:19 AM

The supreme court’s conservative majority likes cox it seems.

by marysminefnuf

3/25/2026 at 8:52:43 PM

A rare W for Cox here.

by jklinger410

3/25/2026 at 4:54:45 PM

> The provider of a service is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement

So they try to hold the provider responsible. While I disagree with this, I can at the least understand some rationale behind it, even though this is inconsistent. For instance, if someone uses a gun to shoot down someone, why is the company providing the gun not held accountable here? They should also be forced to pay compensation damage to people being harmed here. But this is besides the point I am trying to make.

The thing is that I do not want to be held accountable under such a law. I believe when it comes to information, courts should not be allowed to restrict me or anyone else in any way, shape or form. I want a free society. That means flow of information can never be restricted by any such actors. Granted, this is not possible right now anywhere on Planet Earth as far as I am aware, and I understand the implication of this too (no more secrets possible), but I want this 100%. Yet I can't have that because courts restrict me, and all those who want the same, arbitrarily so. IMO this also means that such courts must be changed. Right now we have corporate courts where the money addiction flows in. I understand this system and the problems of this system. This is why there must be a transition starting from the society, to no longer make it possible to restrict service providers here in any way, shape or form. The same would apply to democracy - I don't want to accept indirect democracy run by lobbyists. I want to be in charge, in proportion to my vote, at all times, of every decision (I am ok delegating this to representatives, mind you, but not automatically and not always; in indirect democracy you vote for some representative who can then do whatever he wants to. I am not ok with this. How many former Trump voters would, right now, want Trump to be gone from power, or in prison? I think many would, considering the damage he caused and is still causing).

by shevy-java

3/25/2026 at 5:57:32 PM

> if someone uses a gun..why is the company providing the gun not held accountable here?

They absolutely can be held accountable. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) has carve-outs for: negligent entrustment - when a dealer or manufacturer provides a firearm knowing it will be used for a crime; negligence per se - when a seller knowingly violated state or federal laws in the sale or marketing of the product (and that sale was a proximate cause of the harm); defects in design; breach of contract/warranty.

However, selling a product for lawful use, whether a gun, truck, or Internet connectivity, does not make the seller liable if the consumer decides to use that otherwise lawful product for crimes. There has to be some assumption of agency (and liability) on the part of the individual who is clearing ethical/moral hurdles to do wrong.

I don't see how this unanimous court decision conflicts with that theory in the context of the ISP - in fact, I think it's a reinforcement of some common sense.

by aksss

3/25/2026 at 9:16:44 PM

Using a "gun" in the example is just a away to incite people's natural reactions one way or another.

A fairer example would be holding Microsoft liable for people using Word for ransom notes or something.

by bombcar

3/25/2026 at 5:36:48 PM

> if someone uses a gun to shoot down someone, why is the company providing the gun not held accountable here?

The gun company will claim they sold for self defense or just for a hobbyist's collection - They'll claim that the gun owner used it for something else is not their responsibility. Same for any or product that can be used to kill someone with.

by socalgal2

3/25/2026 at 6:05:56 PM

Let's not forget sports, which is a huge segment of the gun-owning public - trap, skeet, biathlon, PRS, USPSA/IPSC, High Power/CMP, etc.

by aksss

3/25/2026 at 6:39:38 PM

so just ask again tomorrow?

by dmvjs

3/25/2026 at 10:38:59 PM

And you waste lawyer fees just to see your petition for the writ of certiorari denied. Most petitions are denied.

by kccqzy

3/26/2026 at 11:12:28 AM

i mean the judges will change their mind every other time

by dmvjs

3/25/2026 at 3:06:00 PM

https://archive.is/mEgaK

by SunshineTheCat

3/25/2026 at 3:50:06 PM

Now that is some first class irony.

by SirFatty

3/25/2026 at 3:54:51 PM

The System working as intended per SCOTUS!

by tolerance

3/25/2026 at 3:15:57 PM

Sweet. Some copyright infringement to start things off.

by xhkkffbf

3/25/2026 at 3:48:33 PM

[dead]

by brumbelow

3/25/2026 at 4:14:12 PM

[flagged]

by indolering

3/25/2026 at 5:46:09 PM

9-0 rulings happen all the time. I couldn't find an easy to consume list so I asked AI to provide the percentage and it said 65–75% of rulings in a term are 9-0.

by ImJamal

3/25/2026 at 6:06:35 PM

I believe it's the second half of parent's comment that is doing the heavy lifting.

A 9-0 ruling written by Clarence Thomas which puts basic human rights (internet access) above civil liability - try asking a chatbot to find many of those.

by JeremyNT

3/25/2026 at 6:58:39 PM

I think around 50% are 9-0 and then 30% are either 7-2 or 8-1. The contentious cases are the remainder.

by ls612

3/25/2026 at 4:27:25 PM

If it isn't on the net, it can't go through prism

by downrightmike

3/25/2026 at 6:11:13 PM

[flagged]

by russellbeattie

3/25/2026 at 6:47:35 PM

Most opinions from the Supreme Court are unanimous.

by anikom15

3/25/2026 at 4:44:49 PM

This isn't good. They can still sue you, but now they need proof that you as an individual behind that public IP did it. This will only incentivize them to join the push for ID requirements.

by tencentshill

3/25/2026 at 4:46:58 PM

They aren't suing some broke 23 year old. What they can collect is less than their lawyer fees.

At worst, universities crack down harder on torrents, but that was always an option for labels.

by johnnyanmac

3/25/2026 at 5:27:21 PM

There is a very important consideration here that this opinion doesn't really touch on, but I think is invited down the road for future cases and legislation: Can you compel the speech of a third party to aid in exploratory evidence gathering (aka fishing expeditions) without a clear, well defined, and particular, cause of action at court to issue a subpoena?

In most classic U.S. jurisdiction, no, you cannot. Compelled activity or speech is generally frowned upon. The most important part of this case, IMO, was the Supreme Court constraining the Fourth Circuit's interpretation of contributory liability and attempting to turn the DMCA system into one for enabling those fishing expeditions.

by vetrom

3/25/2026 at 7:27:48 PM

I think they still sometimes go for it even when they know they aren't recouping their losses, to deter/scare potential users. Obviously that doesn't scale and it's mostly for publicity stunts but it did happen here in Canada. They more or less just scanned a few trackers and went after every Canadian IP address they found for the given torrents.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/movie-studios-bit...

by mardifoufs

3/25/2026 at 5:49:10 PM

> They aren't suing some broke 23 year old. What they can collect is less than their lawyer fees.

You may not be old enough to remember this, but that's exactly what they did in the 2000's

by MadnessASAP

3/25/2026 at 5:55:29 PM

There's a lot more 23 year olds to this time around. I don't think you can intimidate them down this time.

by johnnyanmac

3/25/2026 at 6:23:11 PM

They didn't exactly intimidate them down last time either. Piracy decisively won the war on piracy.

by MadnessASAP

3/25/2026 at 8:33:29 PM

No, they won. Piracy stayed at a microscopic level rather than becoming the usual way people got things. It stagnated, and maybe shrank. That's why they don't want to go into the piracy stopping business, it's a waste of time and money for them when they could be going after and negotiating with AI.

by pessimizer